 Poster: A snowHead
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Also 2 local ski tourers in Auffach in the Wildschönau, bodies only discovered at 0.40AM. The avalanche was on Breiteggspitze, a favourite among local ski tourers.
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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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https://tirol.orf.at/stories/3141739/ Another report about the same incident... Read to the end, where the Lawinewarndienst-Chef is quoted. It says it hurts him and makes him sad that people are warned, warned and warned again. And then within 2 days there are over 50 registered avalanches.
There was a crazy amount of people in Hochfügen yesterday, skiing in potentially dangerous places without rucksacks...
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I just read the link from @munich_irish, it makes for very grim reading. Two incidents 7 dead,
it could easily have been worse.
Worrying that the mountain guide misjudged the conditions on what was, presumably, a level 3 or possibly even 4.
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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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There were loads of people taking risks thursday. I commented to my wife on a crew who dropped in on a wind loaded line. One of their girlfriends explained to me(she was watching from the top). Her BF had an airbag and it was just off the side off the piste so all was cool. All 4 skied the slope at the same time, only 1 had a rucksack. I asked her who was digging her fella out if he got buried. She didn't get it at all.
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It's not just off piste 5 buried but recovered at Sölden.
| Quote: |
| In Sölden on the Rettenbachferner, an avalanche went from the open ski area onto a slope. Five winter sports enthusiasts were buried and recovered alive. |
The rescue services always say level 3 is the worst for avalanche accidents as many see it as being a mid level of risk. At level 4 many don't go out.
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It's worth noting that this morning SLF still has a level 3 posted for elevation above 1800 on all northerly aspects. We are now 3 days downstream of the weather event and things are clearly slow to consolidate/settle.
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Updated article https://www.tt.com/artikel/30812304/schwarzer-lawinen-freitag-sieben-tote-und-weitere-verschuettete-in-tirol . The number of avalanches is hardly a surprise given the weather over the past few days. The fatalities were not young men pushing limits but older more experienced folk. I know there is a fine balance between risk & reward. I guess the guide who died had been on that route many times without incident (from what I can see it is an easy and so popular route) and his clients were keen to make the most of their holiday but the mountains are always there tomorrow. Perhaps it is simply an incident that no matter how much care and knowledge the guide has is an unavoidable consequence of going into the mountains.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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@munich_irish, it’s clearly a risk he/ she was prepared to take and he/ she got it wrong. I personally think it’s a consequence of people having to book guides so far in advance not knowing what the conditions are going to be like and then people pressurise the guide to go outside their comfort zone potentially. I have certainly been out on days where I felt I’d rather have cancelled than gone out, perhaps there could be a different way of booking? I know guides need to get paid but going out on a dangerous day and also a poor cruddy day is no fun for anyone. Just a thought….RIP to all involved, awful incident.
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This is the Solden avy
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| Quote: |
it’s clearly a risk he/ she was prepared to take and he/ she got it wrong
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No - if they understood there was a risk, they didn't get it wrong. There was a risk. Like when the forecast says there is a 10% chance of rain. If it rains on one in ten of the occasions they say it, they have the risk exactly right.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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@pam w,
Henry from Henry’s avalanche talks posted a blog a few years ago stating that even if the risk of an avalanche is one in a thousand, you have made a mistake if you decide to take that risk.
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Not sure what you're saying there, @john2. You take a risk every time you step out of your house. Or, for that matter, if you stay in it.
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You know it makes sense.
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Someone with a backpack riding without similarly equipped friends, well that's on them, but with a guide
the approach to risk management has to be a little different, in my opinion.
Guides are paid precisely to (a) minimize the risk exposure; and (b) ameliorate the consequences of potential risks when they occur.
A translation of a news report which is possibly inaccurate to start with isn't ideal material.
However, in the spirit of talking about stuff like this in order to learn from it...
Getting the whole party in the same slide ought to be avoidable, especially if you know there's a significant risk.
You know, send the guide down first, whilst hanging out somewhere safe and watching closely in case she "goes down".
Then use a radio to send people down one by one. That's the guide's responsibility to arrange.
It may be incorrectly reported, but the idea that the "call out" for a rescue relied on the one conscious victim (!)
not being completely buried (!); having a working mobile phone (!); and calling his buddy in Sweden to get help
from the emergency services in Switzerland(!) doesn't exactly sound like text book management.
Telling them all that the cavalry are on 112, and what you have to tell them, and making sure they all have
phone service would be a start, if that's your call-out. As would telling them how to manage their phones
alongside their transceivers. Those things may well have been done, of course, but it doesn't sound like it.
None of that may have made any difference to anyone of course, but that's (a) and (b).
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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@philwig, I wasn't comparing. I was sharing what I saw and the conversation I had with victims in waiting
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Poster: A snowHead
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| Val Desire wrote: |
This is the Solden avy |
is that crossing a piste? I'm wondering why it wasn't bombed.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| john2 wrote: |
@pam w,
Henry from Henry’s avalanche talks posted a blog a few years ago stating that even if the risk of an avalanche is one in a thousand, you have made a mistake if you decide to take that risk. |
No.
A risk is an uncertainty. If you want certainty, you shouldn't take ANY risk, regardless of the probability.
I think people are confusing risk tolerance with risk aversion.
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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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| Mother hucker wrote: |
| Val Desire wrote: |
This is the Solden avy |
is that crossing a piste? I'm wondering why it wasn't bombed. |
Never mind the bus stop!
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Seems to be an old snow problem, at least that is what the avalanche bulletin says. I won't comment on the newspaper article.
Once again I'll point out my article about these kind of conditions, worth reading.
http://pistehors.com/dbCNGG8ByuHDGsGAyHG6/old-snow-persistent-weak-layers-and-guided-groups
at the moment there is potential for a similar situation in the western alps. A long anticyclone has destructured the snowpack, if we get significant new snowfall and/or wind we'll go from relatively stable conditions to something explosive
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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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| Markymark29 wrote: |
| @munich_irish, it’s clearly a risk he/ she was prepared to take and he/ she got it wrong. I personally think it’s a consequence of people having to book guides so far in advance not knowing what the conditions are going to be like and then people pressurise the guide to go outside their comfort zone potentially. I have certainly been out on days where I felt I’d rather have cancelled than gone out, perhaps there could be a different way of booking? |
This always reminds me of flying (as a passenger).
We book flights months in advance. Come the day of departure, there's a storm! Will the plane fly? Or will it get delayed/cancelled? Theoretically, the pilot has the sole authority to decide (unless the airport is closed). You would have thought they would err on the safe side as their own life is on the balance. But often enough, one hears about plane crash on bad weather! Clearly, some pilots took chances they shouldn't have. And passengers don't even have a say!
Are commercial aviation safer than mountain guides?
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| Chris_n wrote: |
| ...is that crossing a piste? I'm wondering why it wasn't bombed. |
It looks like piste 30, the track down from the Rettenbach Glacier base. It's a wide U-shaped valley. The road is on skiers' left, it's always bare when I'm there late season. The track in that valley looks flat and boring and runs along the base of the valley (lower down than the road) on skiers' right. The line there looks like people dropping in from the lift over that way (the 007 thing), which is usually closed when I'm there. The valley's very wide and the bottom is pretty flat. I'm sure I've seen slide debris down there before but I would have assumed it was bombed. We don't know if the track in the bottom was open, even. It's not a very interesting looking piste (I've never bothered with it, looks like a cat-track to me), so I can't think anyone would bother with it other than for transport: it's probably not opened quickly.
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| Quote: |
| But often enough, one hears about plane crash on bad weather! |
Really? I must've missed all those news reports...
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Of course flying is a risk, as we are all aware. Flying with a major scheduled airline - easyJet, British Airways etc, is a lower risk than flying in a small chartered aircraft. Flying in helicopters is a higher risk than fixed wing. But to suggest that everyone who decides to fly is "making a mistake" is absurd. But those whose aircraft crash, whilst they didn't necessarily "make a mistake", were certainly unlucky......
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| mountainaddict wrote: |
| Quote: |
| But often enough, one hears about plane crash on bad weather! |
Really? I must've missed all those news reports... |
Just a matter of interest.
How many non-skiers heard about avalanche death? Or remember any from last winter?
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| ulmerhutte wrote: |
Is it safer than guided skiing? I would guess “considerably”, based on the number of passenger-miles (millions) flown for each fatality. It is a guess because I have not seen similar data for guided skiing. |
I would make the same guess too.
Which brings us back to whether guides take more chances than pilots, both of them have a scheduled booking months/days in advance...
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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| Quote: |
How many non-skiers heard about avalanche death?
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Many of the non-skiers I know are convinced it's an activity fraught with danger and risk and think we're all mad.
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You know it makes sense.
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| Quote: |
How many non-skiers heard about avalanche death?
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Loads it's made the Daily Mail 
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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I retrieved someones ski today in the Arlberg, after they crashed (on a tracked out ski route). Got chatting afterwards and they mentioned that they should have been skiing with a guide today. The guide who died yesterday...
Sobering, to put it mildly!
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Poster: A snowHead
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Part of what attracts many people to do active stuff in the mountains is that there is a perceived element of risk. The actual risk pootling about on a blue run is clearly somewhat less than if you pay vast fortunes to be dragged up Everest but it is still part of the experience, if only of the "gosh aren't you brave" type comments from folk who read Daily Mail articles. I have always been pretty cautious with avalanche risk, probably down to lack of ability. However in the summer, when I used to take on something more serious than a bit of gentle hut to hut stuff, I can think of a number of times when my route took me under large seracs, usually there was no choice but to move quickly. I was perfectly aware that seracs collapse randomly and without warning and if they did my chances of survival were small. But like thousands of others I decided it was simply part of the experience and the risk was too small to worry about. Yet people die every year hit by falling ice, a well known British guide died a few years back on the voie normal of Mont Blanc du Tacul, him and his party were hit by a collapsing serac. I guess the next day the caravans were still setting out from the Cosmiques for Mont Blanc, probably clambering over the debris, with little thought about the deadly drama the previous day.
No doubt many of the accidents have been caused by reckless behaviour by those involved but if you go into the mountains you have to accept that you cannot reduce the "risk" of an accident to zero, no matter how careful or knowledgeable you are.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| philwig wrote: |
| Chris_n wrote: |
| ...is that crossing a piste? I'm wondering why it wasn't bombed. |
It looks like piste 30..... |
With reference to the map, that's correct, I'd guess in the vicinity of Mautstelle. We were driving up to Gletscher station and were stuck there for a while as another slide cut the road near the toll booths.
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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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| Quote: |
| Just a matter of interest... How many non-skiers heard about avalanche death? Or remember any from last winter? |
Not sure I understand the point raised... 
I was just trying to highlight that I think that the assertion that loads of planes crash in bad weather isn't factually correct.
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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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| abc wrote: |
| mountainaddict wrote: |
| Quote: |
| But often enough, one hears about plane crash on bad weather! |
Really? I must've missed all those news reports... |
Just a matter of interest.
How many non-skiers heard about avalanche death? Or remember any from last winter? |
My mum heard about it and reckons I need to give up skiing, she reckons every time I go skiing I’m at risk of an avalanche 
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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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You'll need to Register first of course.
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In the words of Baz Luhrmann, "Do one thing every day that scares you!".
This is a tragic event and all the more so that 5 people die in the same slide. As someone with over 200 Ski-Touring days in their log book as a leader and participant, I do struggle to understand how they were all in the same avalanche slide. But, the Austrian übungsleiter system for Ski Touring teaches a stop/go process from the lowest levels.
That is not (as some have mentioned) a do nothing approach, but a system for mitigating risk. If in doubt, the answer is always no regardless of the "paying client" scenario. Mitigating risk is not the same as eliminating risk, otherwise what's the point? In evaluating a particular bit of terrain you can do all the right things and still occasionaly get it wrong. Further more, you can't mitigate the actions of others. We don't know yet if the party triggered the slide themselves or, it was triggered by someone else in the same area.
My old mentor said to me that if the Avi risk is Level 1 then I look 10m either side of where I am. At Level 2 I look to where I want to go; At 3 I'm looking above and below where I want to go and to what others are doing; At 4....I stay at home or in the trees and even then I'm watching the whole valley.
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| Quote: |
| Which brings us back to whether guides take more chances than pilots, both of them have a scheduled booking months/days in advance |
I really don't think it's much of a comparison. Pilots have strict rules to adhere to and basically zero interaction with their clients. Guides are free to make up their own decisions based on their assumptions and risk tolerance, and there is much more pressure on them to keep clients happy. It's not hard to see why guides may take more chances.
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The actual risk pootling about on a blue run is clearly somewhat less than if you pay vast fortunes to be dragged up Everest but it is still part of the experience
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In North America most in resort serious injuries happen on green and blue slopes. I'd be willing to bet there is a higher risk of getting injured on them (where you can't control other people's actions) than sensible ski touring.
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I was perfectly aware that seracs collapse randomly and without warning and if they did my chances of survival were small.
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But they don't collapse randomly. There is much higher risk as temperature increases. So if you can't avoid them by picking a different route, travelling under them during the morning, or ideally before the sun even gets up is going to lower the risk. I get that you can't eliminate all risk in the mountains but too often people seem to use that line as an excuse to not minimise risks as much as possible.
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| boarder2020 wrote: |
But they don't collapse randomly. There is much higher risk as temperature increases. So if you can't avoid them by picking a different route, travelling under them during the morning, or ideally before the sun even gets up is going to lower the risk. I get that you can't eliminate all risk in the mountains but too often people seem to use that line as an excuse to not minimise risks as much as possible. |
Whilst it is true that there are more "dangerous" times of the day and weather conditions, one of the reasons behind an "alpine start", there is also a random element. Seracs can collapse in the middle of a cold night, they are part of a moving glacier. The point is, that it is not possible to completely eliminate risk, only strategies to minimise it. There is always a personal choice between an acceptable level of risk and the rewards for being in the mountains.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| Quote: |
I really don't think it's much of a comparison. Pilots have strict rules to adhere to and basically zero interaction with their clients. Guides are free to make up their own decisions based on their assumptions and risk tolerance, and there is much more pressure on them to keep clients happy. It's not hard to see why guides may take more chances.
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@boarder2020, exactly, a comparison with pilots is nonsense.
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| davidof wrote: |
Seems to be an old snow problem, at least that is what the avalanche bulletin says. I won't comment on the newspaper article.
Once again I'll point out my article about these kind of conditions, worth reading.
http://pistehors.com/dbCNGG8ByuHDGsGAyHG6/old-snow-persistent-weak-layers-and-guided-groups
at the moment there is potential for a similar situation in the western alps. A long anticyclone has destructured the snowpack, if we get significant new snowfall and/or wind we'll go from relatively stable conditions to something explosive |
Thank you for that. The linked article is so well written and informative
From my observations (based on looking at avalanche bulletin for particular resort 1-2 weeks before I arrive so thus may be very anecdotal), avalanche bulletins often, sometimes seemingly invariably, make reference to old snow problems. So it may be understandable that people don't pay enough attention to this, until avalanches start to occur. Presumably there are degrees of risk which is not always conveyed in the avalanche bulletin?
Another question, that there so many avalanches in Austria and not France, presumably this is because much more snow and hence wind slab in Austria.?. if it is due to old snow breaks, would extra snow not be a protection against skier triggered avalanche? I.e. a falling skier could fracture through 30-40cm of new snow/slab to old weak layer, but unlikely through 1m? Or are there nuances I am missing?
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