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Many people, especially those who have acquired substantial skiing proficiency in a setting that is superficially similar to the backcountry (i.e. maintained and patrolled ski areas) do not truly appreciate the risks of backcountry travel in the mountains.

We have become used to the concept that no matter what, help is just a phone call away. The mountains are a force of nature that we as backcountry users must have the most profound respect for. Conditions can change on a dime, and even the most skilled and resourceful SAR technicians may not be able to reach you for days. Some areas, like Canada's Rocky Mountain Parks, are blessed with numerous highly trained and fearless professional SAR personnel. Most are not. In rapidly changing mountain weather, any trip can become an overnight trip, perhaps in the harshest of conditions.

Mistakes happen. Even the best among us have been killed in freak accidents that could not have been anticipated or mitigated (I am reminded of this tragic and unpreventable incident this summer: http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/progs/np-pn/sp-ps/sec7/08-2012.aspx#...). But tragically, it is often the so-called "second mistake" that kills - the failure to take appropriate actions when things started to go wrong, or worse, the failure to appropriately assess situational risks.

For many feats of ski touring or mountaineering, less than 10% of days in a given season may be suitable for a successful attempt. More likely than not, today is not the day. Know when to turn back, and understand that help will come when it can, not when you need it.

Easy access to a high-risk environment is a significant element of this story. Two lift trips to an expert ski area run is a low barrier, several hours of hiking/showshoeing to a backcountry run is a much higher barrier.

When only two lift trips and a warning sign are the barrier to a backcountry run, we should not be surprised that people who might be reluctant to spend several hours working hard to get to the top of a risky run choose to accept a risk that they might not fully understand.

It's possible, but it could also work the other way around.

There may be significant pressure to "Go" if it takes a while to get to the destination, and you have misgivings only at the destination. I.e. sunk-cost fallacy -- we hiked for days to get here, and it looks a bit iffy, but we're not turning back now...

In several places like the top of 9990 at the canyons they have "You Will Die" signs http://parkcity.tv/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Dutch-Draw-1-1.... Jackson Hole's Sign: http://gallery.uberu.com/main.php?g2_itemId=4180&g2_imag.... If you can't understand what these signs say, I don't know what other help you can get. Usually there are lots of other scary "Experts Only" signs on the lifts that get you to these points. They scare the cr*p outta me and I've been boarding for 18 years. Also, as the article says, it's national forest on the other side of those rope lines. It's not illegal in many places to cross.

I'm an avid backcountry skier myself, and currently reading a book about avalanches by one of the leading experts in the field. He had a table in the book that considered 100 day seasons, and a 95% stability of snowpack (all avalanche slopes are safe 95% of the time, all the time, roughly and on average). That means a person with no knowledge is 95% safe, someone with perfect knowledge is 99.99% safe (I think that was the number he used).

The survivability rate ranged from 2 years (or was it even 2 months?) for those without knowledge, to 100 years.

Avalanches are scary. The mountains are scary. And yet there's no place I feel more at home. I wish I could do this more often, but right now I can't. In any case, I respect nature and want to learn as much about it as I can.

What is the book?

The book is called Surviving in Avalanche Terrain by Bruce Tremper, he's involved with an avalanche safety center in Utah (I believe he's the director there, but don't know for sure - book not at hand). It's an absolute must-read if you want to get your feet back on the ground and learn about the mountains. I'm learning a ton and enjoying the process.

> They saw evidence of big slides on the way down, but kept going anyway!

Those caught in the avalanche didn't see any signs, 3 locals splintered from the group at the top and did, on a separate route.

> Waiting for those above by just standing around waiting in the potential slide path.

It's fairly clearly noted that even those in the path stopped in an old-growth bunch of trees, that's usually expected to be safe[0] (in fact, one of the 4 wedged himself in a tree and didn't get carried away)

> Calling 911 immediately shows a lack of experience and understanding. Those buried have ~13 minutes before their chances of survival drop to essentially zero - help is not coming to save them. YOU MUST SAVE THEM.

There were multiple people in search mode, and the first 911 call mentioned was 7mn after the avalanche, not "immediately" by a long shot.

[0] of course not as safe — or smart — as not being in the path at all to start with

The overwhelming reaction I had to this was of how bad the group dynamic sounded. I don't really agree with "severe lack of training and practice caused deaths". Everyone involved had some degree of backcountry experience - many of them had a lot. The issue wasn't lack of training and practice, the issue was how many of the skiers ignored their training and didn't listen to what their experience was trying to tell them.

The primary take-aways I found were to pay more attention to the human factor, keep group size down and route/hazard discussions happening, even (especially?) when skiing with pros or people you really respect and don't ski with all the time.

Fairly strongly disagree on hitting the slope at 11:45 and no snow pit being problems though. Totally depends on the day, and I wasn't there, but this thing slid on depth hoar 3 feet down - that's not caused by a little bit of february sun in Washington. As for digging pits, while I think they can be a good tool to get a look at the snowpack, I also think it's easy to rely on them too much. Spatial variability in a snow pack is HUGE, and all a pit does is tell you how the snow is behaving at one little, somewhat random point. Especially if you're a local and ski in the BC all the time, you should have a pretty good sense of what the snow pack is doing without doing any digging at all. In my home range (the Wasatch), I typically use snow pits mostly to test SPECIFIC questions like "how energetic is this known weak layer that I've been watching for days?." Far more useful are small little "hand pits" and pole probes as you go along, feeling the snow pack in a lot of different places to gather more data points. In this particular case, however, everyone already knew it was touchy, a snow pit wouldn't have changed much. The problem was that they didn't plan or ski accordingly.

The group dynamic reminds me of a chat I had with a friendly guy at my local motorcycle shop. He calls it "rally fever" when a bunch of guys on motorcycles (or scooters, or whatever) get together for a ride and let their inhibitions slip just enough to take that turn just a little bit too fast.

I am sure group rides are lots of fun, but I would be mindful of being extra cautious.

motorcycle group rides are the worst - overtaking a slower moving vehicle becomes way more risky. the first guy assesses, knows he will fit. second guy has enough power and reaction time to follow. the third+x goes in blind and behind and sometimes goes splat. sometimes because of a vehicle, sometimes because the vehicle in front blocked the view of a tightening turn.

riding in a group for a long time also gives you tunnel vision as you follow the guy in front of you all the time. if he goes down, target fixation kicks in and you hit him.

a good group has the rookies in front, to set the pace. rookies at the end mean the worst riders need to go the fastest.

I ride a commuter train in the greater Philadelphia region, at least once we mostly overshot the station (7 car train) with only two or three cars still at the station. The side-doors at the vestibule end were open; since the station had no platform, the auto-doors were locked in the open state and the stairwells were in the open position. Looking down I could see the rail-bed, then a relatively annoying drop into weeds. If I had decided to descend the steps, exit the train there and walk beside the train back to the station I was certain that I would be OK, but that other people would follow me down that path and get hurt. I didn't want that to happen, so I walked back through the train, and everyone followed.

I was on my way to school, the train got stuck about 100m out of the station because there were ground up leaves causing adhesion problems. The train sat there for about an hour, no announcements or anything, it was packed, people were jammed right up against each other and it was getting hot. Someone lost it, forced the doors open and jumped out, then lots of people just followed them. It was a pretty dangerous thing to do because the third rail was right below the doors and you had to sit on the step and then drop down about 1.5m onto the ballast right beside it. After the first couple of people jumped out I think the train crew probably got the traction current switched off and got some steps out but by then most people had jumped out and started walking on to the next station. So you probably did the right thing there!

Severe lack of training and practice caused deaths.

That is not what I got from reading that. Certainly, anything they did after the avalanche hit wouldn't have made a difference. At least that is the impression I got from the description of the injuries.

and a lot of them knew better.

And I think you somewhat agree. Or do you think they knew, but weren't trained well enough?

Thinking about how this could happen, I thought of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster#Proba..., in particular the part where it says

The flight engineer's apparent hesitation to challenge Veldhuyzen van Zanten further, possibly because Captain Veldhuyzen van Zanten was not only senior in rank, but also one of the most able and experienced pilots working for the airline

In this case, each of them seems to have felt safe because there were so many other experts around.

Also, no amount of training can fully prepare you for disaster. Even if you have been taught exactly what to do, you may not be able to do it in a situation of severe stress. That might explain the 911 calls. It could just be another 'program', that of 'call 911 for help' took over.

> Certainly, anything they did after the avalanche hit wouldn't have made a difference

That statement shows you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about and clearly have no place commenting here.

The reality is that how you react after an avalanche will absolutely impact the lives of those buried.

> Or do you think they knew

They seemed to know, but went against their gut.

> Also, no amount of training can fully prepare you for disaster.

Agree, that's why a big part of training is simulated avalanches where people are yelling at you, it's cold, and people are 'dying' every minute you choose to use your damn cell phone.

> The reality is that how you react after an avalanche will absolutely impact the lives of those buried.

The reality of that avalanche is that there was none: according to the doc' report, all three deceased were dead on arrival from blunt force trauma.

But you don't know that immediately after a slide, and you have to assume (hope) that's not the case and do everything your training has taught you to save those buried.

Making calls on your cell phone to report dead bodies is not included in that.

> But you don't know that immediately after a slide

Sure, but that still makes your disagreement with the assertion that:

> anything they did after the avalanche hit wouldn't have made a difference.

wrong, especially when it was followed (and clarified) by:

> At least that is the impression I got from the description of the injuries.

No, two reports were likely death by suffocation from not being able to expand their chest to breathe in.

I intended to respond to the parent post:

No, I think it's more insidious. These people knew what to do but social pressure and group dynamics kept all but one from opting out. The best decision they could have made was to abandon the run entirely. More training would not really have helped, as it would just confer more confidence.

Maybe the real training that people need for these kinds of high risk sports is to watch their friends die.

The group was composed of well-trained and knowledgeable skiers. I'd disagree, in whole or in part, with points 3,4,5,6,8,9,10, but HN isn't the place to quarterback an accident. Each point above is well-founded, but may not apply in this situation.

I think that the main reason that Mrs. Saugstad is doing so many interviews is to spread the word about avalanche and snow safety education. Snow is a counterintuitive medium. If you're headed into the backcountry, you owe it to your friends and family to take a class and learn. (Snow science is super fun, too.)

> Snow is a counterintuitive medium.

I think the bigger problem is ski resorts. They are so "safe" and controlled (we call them Disneyland) that anyone going skiing doesn't have to engage their brain.

It's then very easy to continue to behave in that manner when you are not at a resort.

Often in the back country we say out loud to each other "This is the real deal", "This is not a joke", "No ski patrol has been here" to constantly remind us to be alert to danger signs

Wasn't their another account of the avalanche, written by one of the survivors? IIRC, he made it sound like one of those instances where - individually - they all had misgivings about the conditions, but because no one was comfortable voicing their concerns, they all perceived the group as a whole to be in favor and didn't feel comfortable being the odd man out to question the group.

Probably the biggest issue in avalanche education is how to deal with this human element. I can only imagine its even worse when amongst pros and industry elites like in this group.

FWIW there were such mentions in this account, section 2 or 3.

Yes, diffusion of responsibility. Psychology should be a big part of safety training. After all, most of the time you're training for something out of the ordinary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility

IIRC Outside Magazine did an article about it in the past few months too, although I have not read it.

http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/snow-sports/T...

Thanks! That was the article I was thinking of.

This was written for a less general purpose audience

http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/snow-sports/T...

I just wrote about this from 3 days ago, an inbounds slide at Crystal which is about 40 miles away from the Pass, as the crow flies

http://www.reddit.com/r/skiing/comments/154319/inbounds_slid...

And truthfully, this thread is very similar to the discussion when Craig Kelly's group was caught out in Revelstoke (2003). We have better beacons and airbags but not much has changed (and funding for a lot of avalanche forecasters has been cut

http://www.staynehoff.net/craig_kelly_death7.htm

I used to not think about slides but one day i was skinning around Kirkwood by myself (there are a few areas like K, Alta and Mammoth, that I used to know like the back of my hand) and the snow was whumphing and i was thinking it was textbook snow. A little crown broke off, maybe 2 inches high, 8 feet wide, and I was shocked at how hard it hit my boots, almost knocked me over

This article bring back memories since I was at Stevens Pass that day and remember all of the commotion. Saying that these experienced skiers lacked training and practice is completely false. Here is an article that was originally written around the time the accident happened: http://espn.go.com/action/freeskiing/story/_/id/7593035/aval...

"All of the people in the group were experienced backcountry skiers and were carrying avalanche rescue gear, Michelson said. They were skiing the line in sections, one by one, in accordance with standard safety protocol."

I cannot agree enough with this. I spend quite a bit of time every year in Whitefish Montana, and avalanche awareness is a big deal there in the winter time.

Back country skiing is akin to skydiving. Significant experience and training is required. From avalanche awareness training, to avalanche rescue training, to tools and devices that a back country team needs to have to safely participate in the back country snow experience.

You've got to be very experienced and educated before you venture out of bounds...

I suppose out of bounds in the case of skydiving would be something like base jumping?

  > Back country skiing is akin to skydiving

I got the impression that "Back-Country Skiing" == "Out of Bounds Skiing".

Hey look everyone, another keyboard commando has come to share his hypothetical heroism with us. We are honored.