[HN Gopher] What I Learned in Avalanche School (2019)
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What I Learned in Avalanche School (2019)
Author : macbookaries
Score : 29 points
Date : 2021-02-06 18:57 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| I'm also AIARE 1 certified and use this article to help educate
| my friends about how to behave after getting vaccinated for, or
| gaining natural immunity to COVID-19. Do not fall into a false
| sense of security of invincibility once you gain more knowledge
| or risk mitigation techniques. Don't be the idiot who got
| vaccinated and became one of the ~5% that still got infected or
| spread the disease.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/aOw08
| freetime2 wrote:
| > before instantaneously seizing, when it settles, into a
| substance resembling cement.
|
| Recently while clearing some snow off of a roof, I was really
| surprised at how much the density and consistency of snow can
| change after dropping from a 10 ft roof. From something light and
| fluffy to something that a buried person could scarcely wiggle a
| toe in.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Yes, in my avalanche education class we learned a lot about the
| experiences of people who were buried. You are totally
| immobilized in almost any full burial situation. Even worse,
| you are running through very precious air and generating toxic
| CO2 with each breath. Statistics show you only have about 20
| minutes for someone to find you and dig you out before you're a
| goner. Snow is nothing to mess with, despite all the fun you
| can have around it.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| What I find disgraceful about avalanche incidents is the risk
| that the dead put onto the people charged with coming in to clean
| up the mess they made. You want to kill yourself? Fine, go jump
| off a cruise ship in the night. Don't make a helicopter pilot fly
| in to pick up your stupid corpse.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Avalanches are not like what you think--they're not only on
| dangerous, steep mountains. Any slope that's about 30-50
| degrees and loaded with unstable snow can slide and carry or
| kill people. There are hills just a few hundred yards away from
| the visitor center at Mt. Rainier that have slid and killed
| snowshoers and skiers.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| The avalanches that are killing people all over the place
| this winter in Switzerland are exactly like TFA says: human-
| triggered.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| There is so much wrong here... but assuming that you are
| trolling and ignoring you. For anyone else that might be
| curious:
|
| The danger AFTER an avalanche is near zero. There are very
| rarely second avalanches in the same place, their whole
| mechanism for sliding is more or less and all or nothing
| scenario.
|
| After an avalanche, the snow is extremely dense and compacted
| this is part of the problem looking for survivors. It's hard to
| dig, you aren't doing it with hands, it's not fluffy snow, it's
| ice the moment it stops moving.
|
| It's a pain in the ass to look for people in an avi, but it's
| not typically some life risking scenario for the people on the
| correct side of the snow.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Flying helicopters in mountains is risky. Helicopters are
| dispatched to many avalanche incidents.
|
| I live in Switzerland where we have a ridiculous number of
| avalanche fatalities, which means our rescuers are exposed to
| mountain risk when they should be sitting back at base
| waiting for a call to a road traffic accident, or a pediatric
| inter-hospital transfer, or something actually worth risking
| their lives for. Off piste skiers who put others at risk are
| a disgrace, and if my children do it, I will consider my
| education of them a failure.
|
| (An avalanche that arrives onto a maintained ski slope is a
| different story. Skiers and ski area operators have decided
| to make the effort, collectively, to mitigate the risks in a
| scalable manner, and that's fine.)
| tony_cannistra wrote:
| Like any form of risk, avalanche risk is able to be
| mitigated with information and deliberate decision making.
| Teaching these skills is the primary objective of avalanche
| education.
|
| It seems that your qualms with "off-piste" skiing are
| primarily as a result of an uneducated public, unable to
| make these risk-management decisions.
|
| I can certainly understand that frustration. But, wouldn't
| you agree that the solution is in education, rather than
| judgement?
| iguy wrote:
| > our rescuers are exposed to mountain risk when they
| should be sitting back at base ... inter-hospital transfer
| ... actually worth risking their lives for.
|
| Do you think people who sign up to work for mountain
| rescue, in Switzerland, secretly wish for a life of sitting
| around and occasionally driving an ambulance to the next
| town? Boring jobs are also available... but some people
| want to be out there, summer and winter, with teamwork,
| helicopters & adrenaline.
| tony_cannistra wrote:
| I am an apprentice avalanche educator. This piece does a really
| nice job summarizing the world of recreational avalanche risk
| management, most particularly the so-called "human factors"
| portion. "Nature doesn't kill people with avalanches. People kill
| people with avalanches."
|
| When I read it last year, I shared it with some experienced
| friends. Their consensus was similar, and we were grateful for
| it. It's often difficult to communicate the lengths we go to keep
| ourselves safe in avalanche terrain to folks unfamiliar, and this
| article captures the nuance well.
| andrewem wrote:
| Re-reading this, I again liked this part I recalled from when
| it came out: "By entering the storefront two hours earlier, by
| taking an avalanche-safety course, we had statistically
| increased our chances of being killed in an avalanche. We were
| more likely to die now than we were at 8 a.m."
| tony_cannistra wrote:
| Totally. The catch-22 of avalanche education.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Is it clearly just the education, or is it possible that
| people taking the courses are already at higher risk
| because of their existing interest in avalanche adjacent
| activities?
|
| Looking at the paper, it talks about people choosing to
| take risks (vs the education changing their behavior):
|
| _It appears that formal avalanche education did not make
| victims in this study less likely to be in accidents.
| Across all levels of avalanche training, overall exposure
| scores remained about the same, suggesting that these
| individuals were in the business of trading off the risks
| of being in avalanche terrain with the perceived benefits
| of engaging in their chosen activity. In other words, these
| victims were apparently using their training to access
| avalanche terrain during dangerous conditions so they could
| more fully enjoy their sports. For these people, courses
| aimed avoiding avalanche hazard would have little utility,
| and would probably not affect fatality rates in this
| population significantly. This group would benefit most
| from courses that provided risk management tools for
| balancing hazard exposure with recreational objectives. A
| sobering implication is that such courses might be more
| successful at extending students' mobility in avalanche
| terrain than at reducing the total number of accidents._
|
| PDF at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264877015_H
| euristic...
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Yea that's "the joke". It's just like "sharks are
| harmless, more people die of vending machine accidents
| than shark attacks".... people live in very close
| proximity to vending machines, not sharks. Same for the
| "most accidents happen within 25 miles of home", yes,
| because you are very commonly less than 25 miles from
| home.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's not particularly presented as a joke in the Times
| piece (or above).
|
| And I'm perhaps being tedious, but safety is a topic
| where it pays to think and state things clearly.
|
| So for instance, the instructor, rather than joking (if
| that is what they are doing), should state that the
| education often does not result in a reduction of
| accidents. If it is actually the case that taking the
| course increases accidents, they should work to revise
| the material.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > The problem -- the primary human problem -- is that
| people are susceptible, prideful, bullheaded, egotistic,
| dumbstruck and lazy. Add to this doomed slurry a little
| avalanche training (or what used to qualify as avalanche
| training, and its focus on analyzing snowpack), and
| people make terrible decisions with greater frequency and
| confidence.
|
| Sounds like a little knowledge is dangerous
| freetime2 wrote:
| Reminds me of this xkcd cartoon about lightning strikes:
| https://xkcd.com/795/
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