Guides Survive Avalanches - How?

A snowHead

Two recent avalanches have claimed the lives of a number of people, but on both ocassions the guides the people have been skiing with have survived. I just wondered why this should be. Is there something that the guides do to avoid entrapment, is it luck, co-incidence?. Are there any stats available.?

A snowHead

I'm only guessing, but I wouldn't be surprised if the statistics bear out the theory. I suspect that guides, on average, will have spent much more time thinking about what to do in such a situation, and will have absorbed more lore from survivors. Chances are they're simply better skiers as well.

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

Also haven't they crossed the danger area first (as they should have?) and so are more likely to be able to ski away from it.

You need to Login to know who's really who.

I heard that in the recent St Anton avalanche the guide shouted to the people in his party to get out of the way and they either froze or couldn't get out of the way because they were looking for a ski.

Guides are very careful where they stop, customers tend to fall over more or stop in dangerous places.
I think a guide is more likely to get out of the way even if it means straightlining to a safter location. Guides in Europe also tend to carry those ABS (air ballon) rucksacks.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

I find this hard to swallow.

We are asking an experienced local who knows the terrain while we don't, who can escape the danger better because his skiing is superior to us, he has better gear for surviving the danger while we are ill equipped, he knows to stop safely while we don't and always in front ready to shoot off while leaving us getting stuck behind.

Yet we pay this guide to go together into the same dangerous area. Are we nuts?

Do the guide owns us a duty of care by leading us to an area so that despite lack of local knowledge of the surrounding, being poor in skiing, ill equipped against accidents, choose stopping position unwisely and easily get stuck but still able to come out safely. All he has to do is to guide us to a part of the mountain that such an end result can be achieved.

We can't expect a guide to be perfect but I don't think there is much we can do from the client or customer side.

You'll need to Register first of course.

saikee

Again, you spout total rubbish about a subject you seem to have little knowledge. Lets get one thing straight at the beginning. If you ski off piste, you risk getting caught in an avalanche. You minimise the risks but every time you ski a slope of more than about 30 degrees, you risk being avalanched. The only time a slope is guaranteed not to slide is when it has no snow on it. All a guide can do is be a risk manager.

I do agree with you that a guide shouldn't take a group into areas that have the potential to be dangerous if they are, as you say "poor in skiing, ill equipped against accidents, choose stopping position unwisely and easily get stuck" From the sounds of it I would never want you in a group I was skiing in! NehNeh

Lets look at these one at a time.

"Poor in skiing" - what on earth are they doing off piste on 30 degree+ slopes.

"ill equipped against accidents" - a decent guide should ensure that everybody has transeivers and that there are enough shovels intersperced amaongst the group. Propes are a bonus but if everybody has transeivers, not as important. If your guide doesn't do this, don't ski with them.

"Choose where to stop unwisely" - a guide should always tell his clients where to stop and, as importantly, where not to stop. If the guide feels there is a chance that a stop might be the result of a fall and that stooppping in that place might be dangerous, you minimise the risk by only exposing one person at a time to the danger.

"Easily get stuck" - again, shouldn't be there in the first place. A guide needs to assess the standard of skiing in the group when choosing the route.

All the guides I ski with follow all the above and I trust them totally. However, all I can do is to trust them to minimise the risk. I know they cannot eliminate it. Nobody can.

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

this is just common sense.

a guide will be the first down the slope so that clients can follow. obviously, he will stop in a safe place that is out of the likely path of any avalanche. unless the guide triggers the slide himself, he will (in an ideal world) be clear of the avalanche path. As a client, i would not want it any other way - if i am caught in a slide my best chance of survival is if the guide, being the exeperienced one and the one least likely to panic, is safe after the slide and free to start searching for me.

are we really asking guides to hang around in the danger area (and therefore asking each successive client to stop with him in the danber area) until all are safely down?

the suggestion that guides ski off when their clients get into trouble is of course not worthy of further consideration! Shocked

After all it is free

I'd guess that when somebody dies in an avalanche, that there's an public inquiry/inquest. And any survivors would be witnesses at the inquiry. If the guide survived I suppose they would have to justify their actions.

Does anyone know of any such inquiries and if the results are published?

I've never heard of a public enquiry, as far as I am aware the only form of enquiry is if the question of negligence is raised, the recent case of the Mayor of Chamonix on trial following the avalanche at Le Tour being an example..

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

I am no expert but is it the case that guides tend to ski erm better? That sounds stupid but I mean they ski more gently... and thus are less likely to set off an avalanche?

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

SimonN,

"Poor in skiing", "ill equipped against accidents" ,"Choose where to stop unwisely" and "Easily get stuck" are all relative. These are points suggested respectively by laundryman as he indicated guides are simply better skiers, DB mentioned guides tend to carry those ABS (air ballon) rucksacks and clients stop in dangerous places and skanky suggested that the guide more likely to be able to ski away from the danger.

Before byou have all this fantastic skill and knowledge of flying around off piste with a guide presumably you didn't need to start from a position of "little knowledge", did you?

I have never hired a guide before and I am trying to add more to my little revseroir of knowledge. I do apologise if the questions appear to be stupid. Many skiers will graduate to a level requiring guide to satisfy their skiing need and information from experts is always helpful.

To me being stupid and inquisitive on something that may cost my life is better than appearing smart and got killed in an avalanche if such thing can be avoided.

snow reports

Normally the guide will be taking the highest risk of being in an avalanche by skiing first. After the first skier the risk of setting one off will be less with each subsequent skier on the same slope (though the avalanche I was in the last person set it off onto the rest of us by skiing a different bit of the slope. We were all skiing together as it seemed a safe slope, well bonded and not steep).
If he thinks there is any chance of avalanche the guide will normally get his clients to ski the slope one at a time so as not to stress it with more weight than necessary. He will normally make sure that place he stops and waits for the others is a safe one for the group.

How often do guides make a group dig a snow pit to examine snow layers? This is common in North American heli skiing operations. What about in Europe?

You know it makes sense.

I have done that with guides 3 times. Of course this is only becomes relevant knowledge if you ski off-piste without a guide and for some reason need to ski a slope you are doubtful about.

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

I guess it is only relevant if you actually know what you are looking at--in terms of layers and crystals. I think the bottom line is that there is no substitute for a guide in avalanche country.

A snowHead

johnfmh, I'm not an expert on avalanches, but I understand that these days snow profiling is no longer promoted the way it used to be. The problem is that the variance of a profile across even a single slope is simply too big for the data you gather to be meaningful, and in fact it may be dangerous in that it lures you into a false sense of security. The best example of this was provided a some years ago by a Swiss army team which was learning about profiling and had in fact cut out a slab of snow and performed some jump tests on it. The slope was proclaimed safe, at which point the entire slope avalanched, killing several members of the team. the only part of the slope that didn't avalanche was the slab on which they had been performing the tests!

A snowHead

Mike Lawrie,

So the test was successfully proven and the problem is down to the sampling technique (not being representative)?

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

Mike Lawrie, yes, I heard from someone who worked at the snow research centre that they were no longer particularly keen on the method and neither were the Swiss Army. She didn't mention that incident though. Shocked

You need to Login to know who's really who.

saikee,

The point of the guide is so that we can experience different areas of off-piste that would normally be too risky for us to venture out alone. A good guide will not normally put you or himself / herself at too much risk, but the term no risk no fun springs to mind. (If it wasn't risky it would be all tracked out and no fun). A good guide will turn away from too much danger, will guide the group down one by one keeping distance between the group, will ask the group to stop at a certain position out of danger. A guide is more likely to realize when an avalanche is being triggered and get out quicker. I don't think it's a case of we the customer are at a massive risk and the guide knows he can get out anytime. We might ski with a guide for a week or more, the guide will probably ski off-piste (and be exposed to risk) every week of the season.

Having said all that a snow covered mountain is never the same (which is one of the attractions of skiing). What has normally always been safe could be unstable because of recent abnormal temp, snowfall and wind conditions. Even the most experienced of guides get caught out sometimes.

I know a lot of people who won't venture off-piste because of the safety factor but is it much more risk than stepping in a car? Skiing on the piste can also be risky so what should we do, stay at home? (where most accidents occur)

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

You'll need to Register first of course.

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

There are various reasons for selecting a guide and safety is obviously a prime one. however, a guide is also expected to find the best snow and most challenging slopes (for the groups ability) and this is where the problems can start. But ultimately, no guide will deliberately put his clients at " serious risk".

I prefer to ski with guides who have skied the particular area for many years and who are also part of a "collective" of some sort. For instance, in Val D'Isere I always ski with guides from Top Ski. Every morning before starting, they have a team meeting to discuss what is going on, what the snow is doing etc. By having a reasonable large number of people sharing what they have observed they build up a knowledge base of the snowpack that a guide working on their own would find harder to get. By the fact they are there all season they know the history of the snowpack for the whole resort and that is what is impossible to understand just "parachuting in" for a weeks skiing.

Most of the people I ski with at Top Ski have enough knowledge that if they were in the resort the whole season, they probably wouldn't use guides but we all aknowledge that without that day to day intimacy with the conditions, you are taking great risks.

Help!!

Guides Survive Avalanches - How?

snowHeads Forum Index >>> The Piste