safe travel in avy territory

Very thought provoking article.

http://www.adventureplus.org/avalanche.htm

An excellent article. The last class I went to, taught by the local
mountain rescue group, was focusing on beacon searches, and did not
claim to be teaching "avalanche awareness". They did have a family
member of an avalanche victim, whose body ended up swept into a lake,
say a few words. His beacon works today. That was a good object
lesson, that a beacon may not save your life if you make bad decisions.

This class did mention that the people at highest risk for avalanche are
good skiers who have received avalanche training, not poor skiers or
those who know nothing about avalanches. A little knowledge, maybe even
a lot of knowledge, is a dangerous thing when dealing with something as
hard to predict as avalanches.

Routes can be easily checked on the map to see if they are avalanche
prone or not. The previous avalanche class that I attended, taught by
Knox Williams of the Colorado Avalanche center, 1.5 days, did better in
terms of focusing on slope angle and other key risk factors.

But ultimately, it comes down to bad decisions, people were on slopes
that they never should have been on. You can try to teach good decision
making, but it may not take.

For all the education and reading that I have done, I just focus on
slope angle, and try to stay at 25 degrees or less until the avalanche
danger is low, which in Colorado does not happen until April or so.

Richard


Keith wrote:

Very thought provoking article.

http://www.adventureplus.org/avalanche.htm

Richard Ferguson wrote:
An excellent article.

Keith wrote:

Very thought provoking article.

http://www.adventureplus.org/avalanche.htm

I posted this a little over a year ago but you may find it interesting too

http://www.pistehors.com/articles/av...ns-learned.htm

David