 Poster: A snowHead
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Just back to Innsbruck from a weekend in Ischgl – huge powder and very changeable conditions. We took on some reasonably serious stuff beneath Greitspitz, at times in some pretty sketchy conditions, lots of blown snow and exposed rocks. I was carrying many kilos of camera equipment and still managed to carry the standard avalanche equipment as did my ski partner – not comfortable but I owe it to my wife, family and skiing buddy to carry it as well as those guys who trek into avalanche zones to rescue or dig out the victims of avalanche. So what about the heroes that wear one piecers or carry ipods and knowledge of mountain conditions that seem to surpass mine, the forecasters and those flying choppers? Whilst it is harder to tell from snowboarders, there were so many skiers on fat skis ready for the powder that had not back pack and therefore no shovel or probes. A transceiver alone is a joke (if they even wore one as an emblem) and something that is not going to get me choosing special routes to share with. My point – total amateurs whatever their ability; but also as a business active in snow-sports, I also need to do more to educate. At least when I surfed those not ready for it got washed back in before getting out. No such luck when you look up and see someone taking risks on all our behalves. Great, great, great snow though.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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ineedsnow, sage words.
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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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Thanks flowa, I thought I was on a bit of a rant. The rant cont:
The tragic thing is that you see ‘good’ skiers and snowboarders doing this. We were on a bank of rocks in huge winds in Ischgl - totally inadvertently, we didn’t plan for that or we wouldn’t have taken the line. But we were there and you deal with it for sure. But we had made the best preparation we could and of course we took risks – the Old Town of Innsbruck is far safer. A shovel, peeps and probe are no defence to stupidity that for absolutely certain, but it just mortifies me there are people dropping into these areas either in a group or alone, either way totally alone and totally screwed but for rescue. I would call rescue when needed but it really is the refuge for those who have screwed up. Set out with the right intentions rather than a Play Station view of the mountains – they eat people and not pleasantly.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| ineedsnow wrote: |
| mountains – they eat people and not pleasantly. |
Yes, it would be a lot less messy if they ate sushi or something.
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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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What has this to do with snow domes?
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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Nothing - it says "snow dome" - i.e. singular.
Snow dome doesn't eat people.
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Risk is something we all assess in our own way. Whilst you may think some people irresponsible for skiing high mountain/off piste without the kitchen sink of avalanche equipment, others may think you irresponsible for going to an area where avalanches are possible/likely in the first place. Others may be locals or guides, who know the area well and consider that weighing themselves down with shovels et al increases the hazard level, especially in an area they know to be of very low avalanche risk.
Either way, its pretty un-cool to criticise people who do not share your personal assessment of risk.
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You're talking about off-piste right? I only ever ski on piste and carry no more than tissues, cash, phone, water and camera. Very amateur... 
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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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bar shaker, nobody is going to criticise someone for carrying the basic off piste equipment - certainly not guides, who will want you to carry it - after all, even they get avalanched sometimes. If you ski only in the sort of places where there is no avalanche risk you will only ski very gentle beginners' off piste with no steeper slopes above, That is why I ski with guides most of the time. Even so we were avalanched once on a relatively gentle, well consolidated slope at avalanche level 2.
No avalanche risk means, basically, staying on piste.
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| bar shaker wrote: |
| Others may be locals or guides, who know the area well and consider that weighing themselves down with shovels et al increases the hazard level, especially in an area they know to be of very low avalanche risk. |
How does the increased weight add risk? I'm struggling to see a situation where not carrying shovel, probe etc would be less risky, perhaps you could enlighten us.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| bar shaker wrote: |
| Either way, its pretty un-cool to criticise people who do not share your personal assessment of risk. |
not if those people are putting others at risk, including rescue services who have to try to locate their corpse under avalanche debris without the aid of a transceiver 
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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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Perhaps I didn't convey what I was trying to say very well.
If I make a decision to ski off piste, I will carry the equipment that I consider I will need, based on my own assessment of the risks and based on local knowledge. If that decision is different to someone else's, who maybe decided that he wouldn't actually go to that area no matter what he was carrying, or maybe decided that there was no avalanche risk at all, it doesn't mean that I should criticise everyone else.
Of the three groups above, one will be right and two will be wrong.
As for weight, put simply the more force you exert on the snow, the more you will encourage it to slip and the less agile you will be.
People are killed off piste, carrying the right gear, every year. The right gear may save some/many, staying well away from avalanche hazards would save all of them. Degrees of risk that are fine for me may not be fine for others but I wouldn't criticise others for deciding their own acceptable levels of risk.
Getting corpses out of avalanches is a grim and difficult task undertaken by heroes. Perhaps any criticism should come from those that do that job and no one else.
What I am saying is that in any activity like this, we shouldn't criticise those that take more risks that us unless we are taking no more risk than everyone else in the resort that day.
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bar shaker,
Don't agree at all. People are often killed by avalanches triggered by others. People are killed looking for avalanche victims.
| bar shaker wrote: |
| As for weight, put simply the more force you exert on the snow, the more you will encourage it to slip and the less agile you will be. |
You can't be serious, if the extra few grams that a shovel and probe will exert on the snow is likely to trigger an avalanche then you shouldn't be skiing there. If the avalanche risk in the area is so critical then you should be carrying safety equipment.
| bar shaker wrote: |
| Getting corpses out of avalanches is a grim and difficult task undertaken by heroes. Perhaps any criticism should come from those that do that job and no one else. |
I'm skiing in the back country for many days a year. Hope I never have to but if our group or anyone else nearby were to be hit by an avalanche, the chances of survival would be too low if we waited for someone else to turn up and dig them out.
| bar shaker wrote: |
| What I am saying is that in any activity like this, we shouldn't criticise those that take more risks that us unless we are taking no more risk than everyone else in the resort that day. |
If someone takes a risk that could fatally affect me I'm going to say something.
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You know it makes sense.
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bar shaker, I think you should look back at the original post. Clearly conditions were intrinsically hazardous. As a regular off piste skier i always carry a backpack as do all regular off piste skiers I have come accross - you just get in the habit and you never know fully when you set out what conditions and circumstances you may find. These were clearly not people who had a well based dea what they were doing (I know I don't know enough, and I ski almost entirely off-piste).
Excuse me if I state the obvious but one doesn't carry safety gear for oneself only but to help others. A shovel and probe are of no use to you if you are buried.
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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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You are missing my point.
You are assuming that the person with the lowest threshold for risk is the one in the right.
The person with the lowest threshold of risk is sitting in a bar in the resort.
The OP said he found himself on this ridge by accident and whilst he was carrying an uncomfortably heavy rucksack. That doesn't inspire me with confidence. The people he saw there didn't have the same level of safety equipment. Can I be so bold as to suggest that they may go there every day, may know the conditions to be expected intimately and may know exactly where it is and isn't safe to go from there. Our friend found himself there inadvertently and may just as easily have found himself inadvertently down a crevasse.
Our OP has ended up somewhere he doesn't know and didn't expect to be and is criticising people for having less safety equipment than him.
For all we know, the people that the OP saw may have been off duty mountain rescue boys out for a rip and burn on their favourite secret trail. Whilst he has criticised them for not having shovels, they may at this moment be telling people about the two people who got lost on the windy mountain with no local knowledge and no real idea of how they would be getting down.
I wouldn't be there without a guide but I wouldn't criticise someone who boarded it every day in his one piece and iPod, as he may just have done it every day for the past 10 years. Surely the most dangerous situation would be to be lost and there be no one else on the mountain at all.
Anyway, I'll bow out of this one now and you can all pile into the feckless skiers on fatties that our friend came across, without fear of being challenged, or indeed of knowing who they were and why they were there.
In fact, just to prove how irresponsible I am, I may actually go up the mountain without a helmet, on the 27th.
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Poster: A snowHead
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| bar shaker wrote: |
You are missing my point.
You are assuming that the person with the lowest threshold for risk is the one in the right.
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No he isn't, and you are the one missing the point, in thinking that.
What personal risk people are willing to take is entirely up to them, and should not generally be criticized.
What people do which puts other people at risk is another matter entirely, and fully open to critiscism.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| ineedsnow wrote: |
| snow dome or serious? |
McEnroe is on the money with this one. You cannot be serious, so it must be snow dome.
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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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| bar shaker wrote: |
You are missing my point.
You are assuming that the person with the lowest threshold for risk is the one in the right.
The person with the lowest threshold of risk is sitting in a bar in the resort. |
The person in the bar doesn't pose a risk to me while I'm out skiing in the back country, neither do I post a risk to him.
| bar shaker wrote: |
The OP said he found himself on this ridge by accident and whilst he was carrying an uncomfortably heavy rucksack. That doesn't inspire me with confidence. The people he saw there didn't have the same level of safety equipment. Can I be so bold as to suggest that they may go there every day, may know the conditions to be expected intimately and may know exactly where it is and isn't safe to go from there. Our friend found himself there inadvertently and may just as easily have found himself inadvertently down a crevasse.
Our OP has ended up somewhere he doesn't know and didn't expect to be and is criticising people for having less safety equipment than him.
For all we know, the people that the OP saw may have been off duty mountain rescue boys out for a rip and burn on their favourite secret trail. Whilst he has criticised them for not having shovels, they may at this moment be telling people about the two people who got lost on the windy mountain with no local knowledge and no real idea of how they would be getting down.
I wouldn't be there without a guide but I wouldn't criticise someone who boarded it every day in his one piece and iPod, as he may just have done it every day for the past 10 years. Surely the most dangerous situation would be to be lost and there be no one else on the mountain at all. |
Experience doesn't give you the right to be without safety equipment. As an example a ski instructor in St Anton took a group off the back of rendl. He knew the area and had been skiing it for years. He and his group skied down one by one in safety, it was only when a group above them set off an avalanche that he was forced to search for multiple members of his group. He dug with his hands and suffered frostbite, he had no way of locating these people and his hands proved much less effective than a shovel. Last I heard he was fined, wouldn't be surprized if he never skied again. A lot of people's lives were damaged forever that day including his own. He wasn't solely at fault (the group above should of started their descent once his group were in the clear) but if more people understood what safety equipment was required, what risks are involved and respected the risks to others, accidents such as the above would be fewer. Newer equipment has made offpiste easier (snowboards and fat skis), more and more people race to get that fresh powder but the avalanches are no less severe.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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bar shaker, I takeyour point about avoidance being the best strategy.
But I think the other posters are right about the tiny incremental weight of safety gear - and the fact that since skiers/boarders - with the best will in the world - may set off avalanches onto others - or at least have an opportunity to rescue others buried in witnessed slides they have not triggered, it seems rather selfish not to carry the gear to help rescue others.
And yes - if you have to wait for the patrol/search and rescue - you will be digging for corpses. so why not carry the gear - and be part of a network of people trying to look after each other.
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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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| stoatsbrother wrote: |
| ... and be part of a network of people trying to look after each other. |
That's the relevant point for me. I sometimes ski off-piste by myself. If the worst happened and I was caught in a slide would I want other people to try to locate and dig me out? Yes, of course I would. So it's only fair that I carry shovel and probe in case I'm the one who witnesses someone getting caught.
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I am all for encouraging people to carry kit that could help in a rescue. Its no differeny to having a first aid kit in your car. You do have one, don't you?
Perhaps this would have been better sorted if the OP had spoken to them. He could have told them how angry he was that they weren't carrying safety equipment to save him if he &%+/ed up.
For me playing down avalanche risks because someone will be there and they will be equiped to get me out is a pretty poor plan. I would far rather plan my day on the premis that I will see no one or, if I do, they will be without equipment.
If we choose to ski avalanche prone areas we must accept all of the risks ourselves and cannot rely on others to save us.
The story of the instructor is interesting. He had a legal duty of care for his paying students which is somewhat different. But why didn't the group above help dig the students out?
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Risk assessment is absolutely spot on which is why every time a resort or an operator can enforce minimum basic avalanche safety regulations they do, based on superior knowledge than any visitor of the present and historical risks. In an open area resorts rely on education and the message is transceiver, shovel and probe – very simple. Absolutely agreed, avalanche safety gear is no coat of armour, these things will turn people into paste. 3 years ago in my home resort of Axamer Lizum 4 guys from Bayern stood at the bottom of an avalanched slope and one of their 17 year old girlfriends lay dying under a metre of snow – they had mobile phones. By the time the shovels arrived and the probes had located her she was dead. Try accessing Delirium at Sunshine, the Valluga 2 in St Anton or a heli ski trip with a ‘risk assessment argument’ and you will find that they have done it and you are rightly heading back to the pistes.
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| bar shaker wrote: |
| The story of the instructor is interesting. He had a legal duty of care for his paying students which is somewhat different. But why didn't the group above help dig the students out? |
My understanding is that some of his group were burried and everyone who could helped out. Without transceiver/transmitter, shovel and probe they were peeing in the wind though. The group above who set off the avalanche were snowboarders (two I believe) and they were engulfed by the avalanche too.
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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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| ineedsnow wrote: |
| snow dome or serious? |
No avalanches in snow dome. Seriously.
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