Anna Brown, an avalanche forecaster with the Canadian Avalanche Centre, explained that the snowpack was unstable because of the continuous storm systems coming through the area.

“It’s still sitting lightly on the terrain,” she reported to the Revelstoke Times in November 2009. “It hasn’t pressed in, it hasn’t had time to bond together, it hasn’t had time to squish in to the terrain and really set up.”

File this info into your avy safety databank and draw from it each fall season. Learn from the frightening close call that these four sledders experienced.

“You start to hallucinate, go in and out, and then it just goes to your mind, well, I’ll just go to sleep, it will be OK,” he told the Times Review. “You think in your head at that time it’s going to be okay, but the reality is it’s the worst possible time. You actually want to close your eyes and go to sleep.”

Cooper was anything but OK. Completely covered in snow for more than..”

CLICK HERE to be forwarded to the full article from the Revelstoke Times Review, Nov 26, 2009

The post Early Season Avy Accident appeared first on Zac's Tracs.

I want to ask your advice on a scenario that commonly occurs when sledding.
Senario:
A group of sledders find a hill slope to high mark on. Stable snow ( slab verified by snow pit ) , no previous avalanche activity visible, wind lee side with some wind loading of snow but no cornice . no significant terrain traps. High marking occurs ( one at a time ) but the fifth guy get stuck half way up. He / she is not hurt or trapped ( just stuck ) . The question is – ” does someone climb the hill via sled to safe location and walk over and help the stuck sledder get the sled out ? ” I feel that unless the sledder is hurt – there is no justification worth the risk to endanger another sledder to help out unless the stuck sledder is incapable of freeing the sled after an half hour or so of trying by himself. I know there is a lot of variables in this scenario. For years we found ourselves in these situations ( and in more dangerous slopes ) where if a member of our group got stuck – we would immediately race up the hill to help the stuck sled and rider. We always help our group and other sledders ( not part of our group ) when someone is stuck but I am trying to find a different approach to this scenario. If some one is stuck in a creek or tree well then there is no hesitation – just go over and start pulling or digging. I want to tell our group that they have half an hour to get out by themselves before we consider going up to help. Also we are going to start carrying 2 way radios to help with this situation. Please provide your thoughts .
Regards, Chris

Hi Chris,
When:

• conditions are reported as stable
• our local observations are confirming the stability
• there are no reports of Deep Weak Layers releasing
• the slope is free of traps
• there are rescuers available with visual on the guys on the slope
• the sledder has a really big dig ahead of him
• we are all trained and carrying rescue gear
• or it is me stuck!!
  ===> we have gone to help stuck riders.
  I am not saying that this won’t catch us someday, though. Especially during conditions like this weekend.
  Follow this link for more info on the Special Avalanche Warning (SPAW) issued for Feb 27-Mar 1.
  This is the 2nd weekend in a row.
  SPAWThe fact is two (or more) riders on the slope
  = more opportunities to trigger (more load and more traveling in the terrain to hit a potential weak zone)
  = fewer rescuers (less resources)
  = potential for more burials (more decisions to make and harder to solve)
  = potential for close together burials (harder to solve)
  = potential for trauma (traveling in the avalanche near to a snowmachine may increase odds of injury)To maintain the widest margin of safety the proper mountain travel habits is…stuck sledders should dig themselves out.

  Risk management is all about decisions. Tradeoffs in Risk vs Benefit are happening all the time. We can’t completely remove all the risk, but we can minimize our exposure to unnecessary risks. We make these decisions all the time. Think about driving. We make many choices that affect our safety: – the make and model of vehicle we drive – condition of tires, braking system…all running gear – our physical condition (tired, distracted, rushed…) – speed – the routes we take – rushhour, day/night – our level of training or experience
  At some point we decide that we have invested enough time, money and training to feel comfortable to leave the driveway. We also take into consideration the uncontrollable factors like the other drivers, and the weather or the road conditions.

  Our issues are very similar in the mountains.

  Accidents on the road or in the mountains can vary from bruised egos to death.
  We need to choose to travel with other riders that appreciate these choices that we make each moment of each riding day. While we may not always make perfect choices, by being aware of the hazards and drawing from our avy safety tool kit we hope that to enjoy the backcountry for many, many years.

The post Should I help a stuck sledder? appeared first on Zac's Tracs.

Jump directly to the Jan 28 update – F.A.C.E.T.S.
Jump directly to the Jan 28 update – Methods to Manage.

The following article was re-printed with permission from Ian McCammon. Ian has a background in mechanical engineering, and has worked in the fields of robotics, Microsystems, and aerospace. He has also worked as a field instructor for several wilderness and avalanche programs and is the founder of SnowPit Technologies. His current research is focused on risk communication and decision making.

Randy & Lori shared stories with Ian at the 2010 ISSW in Lake Tahoe, CA this October. We are pleased to run Ian’s paper on F.A.C.E.T.S. as a series in our Newsletters this season!

In hindsight, in the comfort of a classroom or bar, it’s usually easy to see why an avalanche accident occurred. Perhaps the party chose to ski or ride a dangerously wind-loaded slope, enter a terrain trap during high avalanche danger, or continue climbing despite signs of recent avalanching. Working backward from a tragic outcome, the danger seems obvious to us and we wonder why anyone would take chances in such conditions. The easy answer is that the party must have been incompetent, arrogant, or just plain foolish. These answers help us feel better about ourselves since, after all, we wouldn’t act like that. But they don’t lead us to a better understanding of how we might be fooled into making the same mistakes.

To really understand human factors, we need to go back in the accident timeline. We need to imagine ourselves standing at the top of the slope, trying to decide if it is safe to ski or ride. Perhaps we’ve seen the signs of danger, but we also know that we have skied the slope many times before without incident. Or perhaps we know that another party is powering up behind us intent on skiing the same slope. Or perhaps we’ve waited all year for this vacation so we could highmark slopes just like this one.

Such knowledge tends to blur our judgment and tempt us into believing that it’s OK to take a chance on this slope today. These influences operate in the shadowy edges of our subconscious, and we are often oblivious to their effects on our behaviour.

Fortunately, there are predictable patterns in how these unconscious influences affect our decisions. It turns out that these same patterns appear whenever we face physical hazards such as driving, unsafe sex, taking drugs and, yes, dealing with avalanches. These patterns are well known in areas such as advertising and health psychology, but their lessons apply to decision making in avalanche terrain as well.

What Are Common Human Factors?

In a recent analysis of avalanche accidents in the United States, consistent patterns emerged in the decision making of avalanche victims. Here are six of the most common: F.A.C.E.T.S.

*F*amiliarity

Parties traveling in familiar terrain made significantly riskier decisions than parties traveling in unfamiliar terrain. This effect was especially pronounced for parties with substantial experience and training.

*A*cceptance

Accident parties that included females made riskier decisions than parties of all males. The effect was most pronounced in parties with little avalanche training. It is notable that these were precisely the parties in which women were least likely to participate.Most avalanche accidents occured in popular areas on slopes that were familiar to the victims.

*C*onsistency

Parties that were highly committed to a goal – a summit, ski slope or an objective in deteriorating weather – made riskier decisions than parties just out for a day of skiing, climbing or sledding. This effect was most pronounced in parties of four or more.

*E*xperts

Accident parties often contained a de facto leader – someone who was more experienced, older, or who had better skills. Remarkably, when this leader had poor avalanche skills, novice groups were more likely to follow their leader into dangerous situations than when novice groups made decisions by consensus.Check back in a couple weeks to learn what T. and S. stand for!
Oh…the suspense!!

What Can We Do About Human Factors?

Human factors are part of being human. They are essential to efficiently navigating the complexities of everyday life. Try as we might, we can’t simply talk ourselves out of relying on them, but we may be able to recognize when we are most prone to their negative influences and stop a bad decision in its tracks.

1. Travel with partners you can talk to

In a common accident scenario, a party gets spread out in avalanche terrain, with no specific plan to re-group and re-assess conditions. The person out front makes their own route finding decisions and the group follows, often with increasing alarm about what they see around them. When the avalanche releases, the victims are often well aware of the risks they were taking.To avoid this situation, travel in parties that communicate about avalanche conditions. You don’t need a running commentary, just a friendly discussion at key points in the tour about what folks are seeing and experiencing. It helps to agree beforehand on where the key decision points are, and have a common language for discussing avalanche conditions and risk tolerance.

2. Identify when the risk level is rising

To catch an accident before it happens, try a pre mortem test: Ask yourself, if an accident occurs, what would I have missed? Imagine your buddies sitting in the bar after your accident, wondering how you made your decision to ski or highmark that slope. If you can enumerate more than two or three obvious signs of avalanche danger, you are probably taking significant risks. And your feeling that “everything will work out OK” will, in hindsight after an accident, look to them more like recklessness or worse.Good communication within your party is essential to recognizing changing avalanche conditions.

Need help figuring out how much risk you are actually taking? Werner Munter’s Reduction Method, the SnowCard, NivoTest or ALP TRUTh method can provide some quantitative insights. The AVALUATOR, developed by the Canadian Avalanche Centre, is another decision making tool that is handy for recreational travellers. CLICK HERE for more information on the AVALUATOR.

Check back next month for another suggestion to control our ‘irrational’ impulses.
Oh…the suspense!!

What are your suggestions to counter the effects of CONSISTENCY/COMMITMENT and EXPERTS?
Share a story of a close call that was aggravated by these two Human Factors.

The post What Were They Thinking? appeared first on Zac's Tracs.

During the classroom course I couldn’t help but think that I was already doing a lot of the right things, but that it took me twenty years to get that figured out. Lori Zacaruk was our instructor, and she does a very good job conveying the importance of avalanche awareness and safety. It was a very humbling experience to know that I learned in two evenings as much if not more than I had in twenty years of riding in the mountains. With that I pledged to myself that I would take the field Training portion as soon as I could. That same night I signed up for the Field training session in Valemount.

That was last year. Come Feb of this year I was again pleased to know that I had learned a whole lot more about avalanche awareness. I was bummed out to learn that Lori wasn’t going to be our instructor for the field training session but rather some long hair hippy snowboard looking dude named Eric. There was another lesson learned. Never judge a book by its cover. Eric is an excellent instructor that is not only passionate about avalanche awareness but also well experience in avalanches.

Well one year later and I’m in a Classroom again with Lori as an instructor. This time it’s a one evening course. The Indoor Rescue Workshop. This work shop is another valuable lesson that I can take out to the mountains with me to help ensure that my friends and I have the necessary training to safely enjoy our snowmobiling experience in the mountains.

At the end of the course Lori asked me if I thought that after taking the AST1 if there was any value in taking the workshop. My answer to her was absolutely. I told her that at first I thought that the Rescue Workshop would be a good refresher but turns out that it’s just another chapter to an ongoing learning experience.
My advice to anyone that does any snowmobiling in the mountains or any winter outdoor activities in the mountains, take the AST1 Avalanche Skills Training Course and Indoor Rescue Workshop, the two complement each other. Zac’s Tracs and their staff come highly recommended and I have nothing but great things to say about them. Lori I would like to thank you and Dawn personally for your dedication to Avalanche Awareness and could you please pass on a thank-you to Eric for his great work as well.

Ron Charawich, Bonnyville, AB Nov 2015

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