If you can spend enough time....

A snowHead

to aquire the skills to ski off piste then you can spend enough time to aquire the skills to do so safely.

I'm saying this prompting the remarks in response on the NA v Europe thread. It appears to me that a large number of people seem to think that to ski off piste without a guide is something only for the elite & that the necessary knowledge base to do so is beyond their grasp. So with that in mind they would only ski off piste when either with a guide or in a North American resort where all off piste lines are patrolled & monitored.

I for one think this is a fallacy that should be put to bed for once & for all. When in the mountains you should be responsible for your own actions. You should have the knowledge base to deal with most if not all situations you are likely to deal with. All of this knowledge is readily accessible & within in the grasp of anyone who decides to go off piste. If you can spend the time learning the necessary ski skills to go to places where you are potentially likely to get yourself in trouble then you can spend the time to learn to deal with these situations. Whether that be reading up on it in the off season & then asking your guide/instructor to cement this knowledge when skiing with them. Or even by doing it yourself. Digging a snow pit or reading a slope is not rocket science it's just a set of basic principles applied in a read world mountain situation. Avalanche transciever kits can be hired in virtually every ski resort (if you do not have the money to purchase it) their use is actually quite simple though it does take practise. This practise does not have to be during your skiing time. It's possible to go out with a few beers at the end of the day & just dig holes in the piste burying them & then finding them. Most of the larger resorts nowadays also have transciver practice parks.

With this knowledge it's possible to do things & go places you probably thought were never possible. It is not something only reserved for the elite & as far as i'm concerned never should be. It is however up to you to make sure that you know these things.

A snowHead

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

frank4short, trouble is mate - your post on the other thread is actually having a go at people who feel they would need a guide. And while all of us who love off-piste should learn the skills you describe - the idea that - in a resort you do not know well - they are enough to mitigate risk is not very clever.

Transceivers reduce risk - but the only thing they guarantee is that your body will be found.

Actually the best bit of safety equipment you can take is a woman. The evidence shows there is much less chance of being involved in a slide or fatality of there is some dilution of the testosterone.

And as Wayne says - you do subject rescuers to risk - and also those skiing below you. I suspect Wayne also knows his territory rather well.

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Since this is primarily a brit-centric forum, your thread title is pertinent: "if you can spend the time" - most people on this forum get maybe 12 days a year or something. Education is good but spending time *really* should mean being out there in the BC with people more experienced, learning and gaining experience first hand which is a long process before you can really be safe. Reading a book and doing some search patterns in the park and then diving into the BC is irresponsible - a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, ask people teach avy 1 courses many of whom finish by saying "you are now the most dangerous people in the BC, be careful".

I do see where you are coming from though and people shouldn't limit themselves when ski touring and off piste without guides can be within their grasp by understanding and properly managing the risks.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Good judgement comes from ... bad experience!

You can go backcountry without getting hurt and start thinking you KNOW how to judge back country risk. Until you trigger a slide (hopefully on purpose, with no one below), you don't know what you don't know.

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abc, It's true, I started a slide once, panicked and skied off a cliff.... that wasn't in my avalanche plan at all. Can learn everything with the best of intentions but the mountain can always catch u out if it wants.

Do the training as best you can, get the kit learn the slope and then hope for a little luck

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

abc, I believe the actual quote is

Good decisions come from Experience.

Experience comes from bad decisions.

[/ pendantry] Laughing

After all it is free

abc, I believe the actual quote is

Good decisions come from Experience.

Experience comes from bad decisions.

[/ pendantry] Laughing

frank4short, To follow on from the other thread, I have spent enough time in the Espace Killy to see lots of slides happen but not enough in continuous blocks to see how the changes in the snowpack over time will make particular places safer than others.

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JimW, I was twisting the original quote. I should have put a smiley there.

But it's really "bad" experience that tells you your first "decision" was bad, isn't it? wink

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More within the current topic of discussion. Lots of people ski off-piste without learning proper mountaincraft, not all of them trigger slides. Does that mean all of their decision was sound? Or was it just they were lucky SO FAR? The latter would go on to think their knowledge of mountain safety was good when they are not.

The original poster seem to think his "training" and "study" will keep him safe. But anyone who had actually lived in the mountain will know, without knowledge of the history of how the snow was deposited early in the season, digging a snow pit at the top of the slope is pretty near useless. And avalanche beacon is only useful AFTER one got burried by a slide, by which time it would quite likely be too late!

snow reports

Hey! I noted:

You know it makes sense.

paulio,

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

I have skied a lot off piste, most often with guides but also without. I have learned a fair amount but play very safe, especially with steep slopes, avoiding many slopes a good guide might have taken us on. I am constantly amazed at the way a guide can intuitively sense the change in safety in a slight ripple of an otherwise regular slope and correctly gauge that that one place is dangerous and another is not. I cannot see how that level of skill could be attained by a two week per year skier, though I agree that in more clear-cut cases most people could get enough knowledge after a while to ski a fair amount of the off piste - particularly the less steep stuff.

The one time I was in a large scale avalanche, however, the slope should have been well consolidated and was not steep. The guide had not anticipated it could offer any danger so we were not skiing it one at a time, and I know it would never have occurred to me to suspect it either - I would happily have skied it without a guide.

As someone once said to me: if you ski a lot off piste for a great many years it becomes very likely that eventually you will be involved in some way with an avalanche.

Even the guides have their levels of uncertainty and I have seen guides avoiding an area till our guide decided to go there - upon which they all followed close after.

After reading a thread some time ago in which a skier from the USA mocked the fact that Europeans didn't seem to ski much off piste I was interested, visiting Jackson Hole last year, to discover that US skiers have even more fear of unpatroled slopes than Europeans do. The inbounds off-piste was skied out but we went out of the first gate beyond the tram and there were no other tracks at all (into Granite). Even a week later with no snow fall, going out of another gate, we soon left the few tracks behind by skiing our own variant. You couldn't do that at Chamonix!

Edit: I should mention that the so called "side country" at JH did get skied, it was the back-country that didn't, and that involved a bit of a walk out.

A snowHead

I have to agree with Frank4Short...
The knowledge required to keep yourself safe in the mountains isn't particularly complex.
And part of that skill set is being able to assess a ski route with respect to your own limits.

Any of the 'experts' above who disagree should go away and spend a few hours reading this book -

http://www.freeskiing.nu/

You might learn something....
Which you certainly wont find on this forum wink

A snowHead

Read that already.... opening and closing paragraphs are; this book is just a guide or for reference, nothing replaces experience the maountain is unpredictable...

I think nobody here would disagree that avalanche courses are a good idea. Just making the point that Avalanche safety is infinitly complex and you can never be sure you're safe so you do as much as you want/can and then the rest is up to the amount of risk you are willing to take out there.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Haggis_Trap, fascinating you should dismiss snowball's comments so lightly - he is a very experienced, fit and advanced off-piste skier. I would not call him a mere in-quotes expert. I have skied off-piste a lot without guides - often with SCGB reps, in the old days, and occasionally with others whom I thought I could discuss safety with as the need arose, and whose judgement I trusted. But the suggestion that you can pick up every thing you need to know from a book concerns me. To take a Mountaineering analogy, Langmuir is a great reference, but you won't gain a mountain leadership qualification based on a knowledge of a reference alone, showing you can climb the climb, and proof of experience also counts. Even guides get things wrong. Somehow

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Our assessment of risk is a fickle thing.

Around 18 people a year die in the UK from taking a bath. Does that stop anybody from having a splosh - I doubt it.

Around 8 people a DAY die on Britain's roads. Do we consider this before jumping into the car - rarely, if ever.

Perhaps worst of all, more than 2 children a WEEK are killed on Britain's roads. A further 57 are hospitalized. Do we ban idiots from the road? No, instead we hassle all those giving them a lift in case one of them has an infinitesimally small chance that they might have untoward intentions.

It's a strange world.

Info:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/accidents/

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Looks like we're converging here. No one is saying "never go offpiste without guides". No one is saying either "guides are pointless at all times". Exactly how much and how far one is prepared to go offpiste without guides depends on the time they can invest in deepening their avy knowledge, plus personal / family risk assessment, etc. What fits one doesn't fit the other.

I guess a majority of skiers on this forum would prefer to invest some money in a guide or in getting to NA for inbound skiing, than investing the time to get really good at understanding avy safety in general and on a specific piste (I'm slowly moving from Group 1 to Group 2). I think this is a good rather than a bad thing.

Right now, I'm more worried about the fact that on a presumptive 1-10 scale my avy knowledge score would be significantly below my skiing ability score. Which means I can get myself onto terrain and into situations that are beyond my current avy safety knowledge. So overall I try to play it safe.

I disagree with this statement though: "The knowledge required to keep yourself safe in the mountains isn't particularly complex.". In fact, in mathematical terms one could say it tends towards being infinitely complex. (Of course, depending on how risk adverse you are, there are levels and levels of simplicity: 1. Avoid all mountains. 2. Avoid all mountains with snow. 3. Avoid all offpiste. 4. Avoid all offpiste when avy danger is above 1 or 2. 5. Avoid all slopes above 35 degrees. 6. Avoid all south-facing slopes in the afternoon...and from here on it starts getting a little more complex).

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

Much of a guides task is choosing where to ski and when to ski. Much of the initial post is about dealing with situations. The two are different. Good choices about when and where to ski are about avoiding situations that need to be dealt with.

snowball said it beautifully "I am constantly amazed however , at the way a guide can intuitively sense the change in safety in a slight ripple of an otherwise regular slope and correctly gauge that that one place is dangerous and another is not". I remember one slope where Wayne Watson of Alpine Experience said we must ski a very narrow strip beside some rocks because he could see a fracture line on the big face. I could not detect it from above. We skied down one at a time, safely, and the slope did not fail. If we had skied there without a guide the story could have been very different.

frank4short, said "Most guides will not spend their entire season at a given resort they will spend it spread out over a number of different resorts doing a number of different activities ...". Is this true? What are the statistics of where guides spend their time? I would have expected most guides to have a home patch where they spend most of the time but they occasionally go elsewhere.

After all it is free

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frank4short, But many of the guides have lived in the area for years and spent huge cummulative amounts of time acquiring locally specific information - have a good network of contacts etc etc.

I don't know anything about you - and you have not said much about how much time you spend where you ski - what standard you ski to - your age and human-factors profile.

I think there is a huge difference between someone like SZK or Parlor or Wayne who live in an area and spend a lot of time over several seasons skiing it - and the typical UK off-piste tourist who has 2-4 weeks sking a year - often in different resorts - and even if they have read the book, done the course, got the tools and calculator - are kidding themselves that they can make a high quality assessment of an area which they do not know well. The macho "well it must be safe because I am alive so far" attitude is dangerous.

Arno and Snowball are spot on.

snow reports

stoatsbrother, OK for reference just to fill you in (but not too much hopefully wink

)

I'm 32, male (probably obvious that one), irish, I lived in chamonix for almost 3 years in cumulative time but did 5 seasons there. I'm an avid mountaineer & skier. When skiing generally speaking the only time i'm on the piste is either when with friends of a lesser ability level or when getting to somewhere to go off piste. I'll comfortably ski 45 degrees in any conditions & up to 50 degrees if the conditions are right. The bulk of my skiing to date has been in france as i feel it has the best skiing in the world in terms of bang for your buck. Though i have been on a road trip in canada a few years ago & spent a bit of time in switzerland & italy having done mini excursions when living in cham. i've never paid for a guide though over the years have had to the privilege of counting several of them as my friends so have skied a fair bit with guides but never as a client.

Adrian, In my experience of the guides i know. Most of them though they will have a home base as you put it would at best only spend half of their winter season there. The only possible exception to this i have found is maybe chamonix guides as the work there tends to be more lucrative e.g. taking people down the vallee blanche & even at this most chamonix guides won't usually spend more than 2/3's of their winter there.

What i've been trying to point out the whole way through this thread is the mountains are not about absolutes. There is no absolute safety or for that matter it's exceptional to have absolute danger. It is possible to learn the skills to mitigate against risk. The difference being the level of acceptable risk to your knowledge base. E.g. as others have said it's possible to learn relatively easy to know a certain type of slope may be safe under a certain set of circumstances however your mate the guide with more knowledge than you may take this knowledge & take it 3 steps further. I acknowledge the fact it takes years to acquire the knowledge base a guide has but it does not take years to start on this road, which will make it possible to go some places without a guide you would not previously have gone if you didn't have a guide.

You know it makes sense.

Dammit: I've been meaning to start this thread since the season before last, I didn't because I knew I wouldn't have had time to deal with the inevitable backlash but I've always thought it was an interesting question to be raised.

Skiers will spend hundreds of pounds on lessons to improve their technique but the vast majority, I'm guessing over 99.9%, don't have the first clue about the mountain environment especially when it comes ro snow safety. For a massive proportion of these people it's no bother as they have no intrest in leaving the pieste or controlled area. However, there are still plenty who want to go off piste. Of these there'll be quite a few idiots riding dangerous slopes in bad conditions and at the other end of the scale are the people who'll stick with a guide at all times, not wrong and certainly safer. Of course this is still not 100% safe, nothing in the mountains is that simple e.g. snowball has been avalanched when skiing with a guide.

But unless you're absolutely loaded surely there's times when those skiing with the guide you might want to do something that you can't because maybe someone in the group isn't quite up to it. Maybe you didn't or couldn't book a guide that day. What do you do: stay on piste or go off piste? Go off piste and you'll be one of those idiots above unless you've learnt about snow safety.

Now this is where the riot starts Laughing

Everyone can learn about the snowpack, while to be a top skier you might hit physical limitations there are no such issues here: all it takes is some time, some courses and some books. If you're spending time with a guide ask them why is their route safer than that one over there, they'll be happy to help and if not then don't use them again. Dig around in the snow, if there has been a slide go and have a look at the crown, what was the weather like, why did it slide? None of this will make you an expert but it makes you informed and gives you more tools to assess safety. The simple point is anyone go into the mountains you just have to learn about them.

Oh and I'm not a hardcore snowboarder, certainly nowhere near the likes of frank4short, Haggis_Trap, parlor etc. but I do go off piste without a guide* and am happy to make calls on whether or not I think something is safe.

*even on glaciers which someone on here called idiotic last winter.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

A snowHead

A snowHead

frank4short, I'd agree with most of what you say in your last post - and you obviously know Chamonix well enough to be as safe as any one can be there.

The danger is that you extrapolate from your own personal experience and skills to the situation facing the 2 weeks a year skier on unfamiliar terrain - and seemed to sneer in the other thread at those who feel that they do need either a guide or a controlled environment. I also am not certain that the skills and knowledge you have of the places you have skied automatically transfer to safe skiing in terrain which you have not visited before.

Should those who intend to ski regularly off-piste learn and develop the skills that you describe? Damn right.
Should every skier be willing to make their own assessment of the terrain and say no on the basis of that? Certainly.
Does a guide who has grown up in the mountains have a better feeling for the risk than I ever would have whatever training I had? Yes I believe so.

Personally I think the skills are complex - because you have to factor human-factors in your assessment. I also would never go onto off-piste glaciated terrain without a guide or a very knowledgeable local, unlike Swirly. I do ski off-piste sometimes without a guide in level 1-3, and try and see what guides or better skiers are doing when they make their assessments.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

is now an appropriate time to bring up ski club reps? Twisted Evil

while i am all for educating yourself and think that the big mountain routes available in the alps are some of the ultimate skiing experiences, you have to be a bit of a killjoy not to enjoy a good day of inbouds powder skiing at a good resort in NA

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Arno, indeed Wink

on both counts

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

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Sorry frank4short, you are wrong. Off piste skiing is the most dangerous thing in the world. NOBODY should ski off piste. OK? Wink

I think a major changing point in this is the skills needed to ski 'off piste' are so much easier gained now. Snowboards started it and fat skis haven't helped either. In years gone by you had to be a pretty good skier before you had the skills to ski deep powder, those skills came from spending lots of time on the mountain - during that time if you didn't pick up some mountain-craft too then you're just another Darwinian statistic. In my first season, 14 years ago Embarassed

, I spent most of that time on a board skiing deep pow in places that scare me thinking back, we had no knowledge and worse, no respect for the mountain.

Do you need a guide to ski off piste? Not if you have the right skill set. How do you acquire the right skill set? The biggest skill is being aware of your surroundings - historical knowledge, which can be picked up from the pisteurs (or the numerous 'freeride huts' opening up across Europe) or guides, dig a snow pit etc etc. And then adjust your skiing terrain to suit. . Learn as much as you can from books, especially Freeskiing, because all the knowledge helps.

I would hire a (local) guide in a resort I am not familiar with but only because they will have a better idea of where the best snow is.

Hiring a guide to do something like the Haute Route is a waste of money, if you have the right skill set.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

Arno, yup.

After all it is free

frank4short, but NA off piste probably is more accessible and safer, and a good way for people to start. Added to which they may get to ski on decent snow. Europe is still the place to learn to ski really bad snow. Wink

It doesn't mean one is better than the other. My more memorable mountain experiences - away from it all - are definitely in Europe, but most of the real yee-ha powder experiences are in North America.

Your post actually insisted NA off-piste was worse. I say it is just different and a comfortable place to start.

So you are happy to go skiing off-piste on glaciated terrain you have not visited before without someone who knows it?

I have no qualms skiing on glaciated terrain i've not visited before without someone that knows it. There are some simple rules to reading glaciated terrain. Once you know these & learn to use them in the real world it's possible to mitigate the dangers the glaciers present.

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