 Poster: A snowHead
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Megamum, you can learn quite a lot via books and the internet. Bruce Tremper's book Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain is a good bet. You could also find people who are giving classes. With the explosion of interest in 'freeriding' quite a lot of resorts are doing free seminars and the like. It's not as comprehensive as a proper course (usually two-three days) but will get you on track. In reality I think you'd be better learning some of the simple decision making techniques:
http://www.monosar.org/safety_article_avalanche_risk_reduction_method.html
You can get apps that let you measure slope angle accurately on most smartphones. You basically can't really go wrong by being conservative in what you choose to ski and for the most part you and the kids are likely to be skiing on slopes less than 30 degrees so are drastically unlikely to be avalanched particularly if you avoid off-piste skiing when the risk is 4 or greater. The things to watch out for are local steep spots like in the case above.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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meh, feef, thanks both, I will study up.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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I think the daftest situation I found myself in was getting half buried on a totally flat forest path. We were all going along and I stupidly skied on the fresh snow at the edge of the path immediately below a 50 foot high embankment. Think about it... that embankment or cutting was probably grass or dirt. The slope of snow was really being held up by the transition between the slope and the flat path at the bottom. By skiing along that join I effectively cut away the support below the weight of snow above and about 25 feet of it fractured to a depth of 6 inches and slid. Only embarrassing but if the top half had slid too I may have been buried to the point where I would not have been able to free myself. As it was it took my mates a couple of minutes to dig me out.
I defo will not be making that mistake again.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Megamum, mainly what they said (especially Tremper's book), if you stay on mellow terrain (like where the skiers are on the picture I posted) you should be fine. Keep an eye out for bits that are steeper than the rest of the slope - humps, rollovers, etc. Whilst they may seem like fun things to jump off, they can also be good places to trigger slides. Check what's above where you plan to ski, if there's something steeper that could slide onto your route. Pay attention to where the wind is blowing from (and has been blowing from in recent days), and avoid lee slopes (where you can find windslab). Avalanche reports will often tell you which aspects are likely to be windloaded, ie:
Which indicates that presently you can find dangerously wind-loaded areas on all aspects above 1800 (no surprise, it's been very windy).
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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| davidof wrote: |
| ChrisWo wrote: |
| I'd have expected ski patrol to be keeping an eye on any avalanche danger building up there. Does that make me really naive? Are resorts just too big for patrollers to go around triggering on every slope that might slide, or was this an unusual location for an avvy and it caught patrol unawares? |
I think you are being a bit too deterministic about avalanches. The piste patrol may put a 2kg charge on a slope, nothing happens. Next day they decided to put a larger charge down. Nothing. Skiers ski the slope. Then someone goes down and boom, the whole lot goes. No-one can really say why an 80kg skier triggered the slope when high explosives or the passage of other skiers didn't. Don't make too many assumptions about off piste and be prepared for the unexpected.
Which brings me to another point. I don't ride round on piste with a beacon transmitting, in fact I don't go out for a day's piste skiing with a whole load of avalanche kit at all. The chance of being killed by an on-piste avalanche in N.A or Europe is somewhere around 1 in 250 million skier days. Off piste the risk is more like 1 in 50,000^ skier days. ...
^these are guesses, don't go round quoting them as if they are hard 100% fact. |
| davidof wrote: |
| Pedantica wrote: |
| really, really know what you're doing and most of the rest of us don't. |
Unfortunately the graveyards of the mountains are full of people who knew what they were doing. The major group at risk are people who are skiing a lot, locals, pros etc not one week a year holiday skiers. It is a question of the number of days of exposure and a certain tolerance to risk that comes with things like familiarity with the terrain. |
Another reason why overall stats do matter. The lesson for this thread isn't really learn to assess risk - though with the retrospectoscope that slope at 35-40 deg was risky - and it's certainly not don't go beyond piste markers without avvy gear (that thar's man's terrain). It's really "anyone can have bad luck". Anyone flying soon?
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slikedges,
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though with the retrospectoscope that slope at 35-40 deg was risky
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and
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anyone can have bad luck
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You can't really have it both ways!
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don't go beyond piste markers without avvy gear (that thar's man's terrain
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Agreed, that's an inference too far.
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