In the first article of this series I provided basic information on avalanches and their behavior. In this second part I am going to talk about protecting yourself from avalanches.
As it was mentioned last time, avalanches are the single biggest danger threatening the skiers. The more time you spend in the mountains, the greater is the likelihood that you will be caught by one. As we know already, avalanches kill people every year. Instead of wondering the power of an avalanche you should think what you could do in order to minimize the risk of being caught by an avalanche.
It all starts from checking the weather for the previous days. The avalanche risk is highest during and for about 24 hours after a new falls of snow. Most of the backcountry skiers in crowded ski resorts, such as Chamonix in France, rush to the mountain as soon as the lifts are opened. Many times they enter the powder fields when the avalanche risk is highest. Fortunately many of them are professionals and they know what they are doing. Unfortunately there are also people who don’t always know what they are doing and what kinds of risks they are taking.
Ski patrols analyze the risk for an avalanche every morning
Ski patrols enter the mountains before ski lifts are open. They examine the snow condition and order ski lifts to be closed if the danger is too high. If not, ski lifts are opened, but ski patrols close the most risky slopes and they warn people with signs or flags. These people are professionals. They live and work in the mountains and they know very well when there is a high risk of an avalanche. If you see that slopes are closed or you see warning signs, respect the orders and do not enter the risky area. Notice that it is not only you who can be caught by an avalanche, but also an entire village in the valley. You might trigger a real killer avalanche.
Have you ever heard explosions in ski resorts in early mornings? Probably yes. You hear them because ski patrols go blasting the slopes in risky areas. They use explosive devices in order to release any dangerous snow slopes. Someone might feel that it is stupid to blow up fresh powder snow, but the point really is to protect people from avalanches.
Ask people’s opinion on avalanche risks
Now as you have checked the previous weather, find out what locals say about the snow conditions. Ask ski patrols, guides, and shop owners, people on street, ski-instructors or even local skiers. Just ask their opinion in entering a slope and backcountry run you are interested in. Find out if it is reasonable to enter the slope you are thinking about.
If you enter the area, you need to check the snow by hands. You can perform a number of checks:
1. Look at the surrounding similar slopes (same aspect, altitude and angle). If they have already “avalanched”, there is a risk that your slope will do the same
2. Look for signs if instability, such as sun-balling slumping, which can indicate a danger of an avalanche
3. Dig the snow and examine the snowpack
4. Do the ski pole test
5. If it is possible, “test ski” a similar slope
Now we know what to do to minimize the risk of being caught by an avalanche. Next it is time to examine the snow profile. Because this topic takes quite a lot of space, I decided to divide it into an own article. Tomorrow we will continue this series by focusing in examining the snow profile. The last part of this series, the fourth article, will discuss about emergency procedures if you or a fellow skier is caught by an avalanche.
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5 Responses
[...] article series introduced us to the basics of avalanches. In the second part we discussed about avoiding avalanches, and in the third part we learned how to examine the snow profile in order to understand the risk [...]
boooo avalanches
After an avalanche like that you definitely would need your windows washed!!!
All the above very very oversimplistic. Typically this sort of posts that give people wrong feeling of safety. Snowpack is typically non-homogenous, so you can forget about testing the snowpack at point x and infere same behaviour at point y, no statistical relevance of sample at all. You can have risk level 1 at one point and risk level 5 two meters next to it. “Bottom up” analysis in such an uninformed way, based on old truth, is totally useless.
Any one interested in a serious method should take a look at
http://www.geocities.com/yosemite/trails/1996/3×3.html and get a book on top down avalanche risk methods (Werner Munter method)
dude im sorry but your going to look extremly unperfessional if you do a ski pole test a patting test a pri ski thing. oops wait let me check if theres gonna be an avalanche yup looks liike theres a 2 percent chance. Rarely do alalanches strike and kill in crouded ski resorts such as sunshine village they do tests every day so you dont need to test . dude loved the artical everything about it it was great and gave me a lot of information thanks it was cool listening to your oinion sorry i wrote a book.