Tremper - Avalanche essentials: a step-by-step system for safety and survival

AVALANCHE
ESSENTIALS

Bruce Tremper

DEDICATION

To my wife, Susimy soul mate, best friend,
best outdoor adventuring partner, and love of my life

Mountaineers Books is the nonprofit publishing division of The Mountaineers, an organization founded in 1906 and dedicated to the exploration, preservation, and enjoyment of outdoor and wilderness areas. 1001 SW Klickitat Way, Suite 201 Seattle, WA 98134 800.553.4453 www.mountaineersbooks.org

Copyright 2013 by Bruce Tremper

All rights reserved

First edition, 2013

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Distributed in the United Kingdom by Cordee, www.cordee.co.uk

Manufactured in the United States of America

Copy editor: Erin Moore

Cover, design and layout: Peggy Egerdahl

Illustrator: Gray Mouse Graphics

All photographs by author unless otherwise noted.

Cover photograph: Caroline Gleich, Kessler Peak, Wasatch Range, Utah

Jay Beyer Imaging

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tremper, Bruce, 1953

Avalanche essentials: a step-by-step system for safety and survival / Bruce Tremper.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-59485-717-1 (ppb)

1. MountaineeringSafety measures. 2. AvalanchesAccidents. 3. Avalanches Safety measures. 4. Skis and skiingSafety measures. I. Title.

GV200.18.T73 2013

796.522dc23

ISBN (paperback): 978-1-59485-717-1

ISBN (ebook): 978-1-59485-718-8

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I especially want to thank my friends who reviewed the sections of the manuscript in their area of expertise, found my many errors, and offered valuable suggestions. In alphabetical order:

Dale Atkins (president, American Avalanche Association)

Tyson Bradley (Utah Mountain Adventures)

Brian Lazar (Colorado Avalanche Information Center and AIARE)

Ian McCammon (avalanche educator; now working in risk management) Wendy Wagner (Chugach Avalanche Center)

Lynn Wolfe (editor, The Avalanche Review)

Thanks to the many people who contributed graphics, data, research, and long brainstorming sessions. At the Swiss Federal Institute of Snow and Avalanche Research: Stephen Harvey, Manuel Genswein, Jrg Schweizer, Chris Pielmeier, and Werner Munter; my New Zealand friends Andrew (Hobbie) Hobman and Gordon Smith; the amazing Karl Birkeland, director of the Forest Service National Avalanche Center; all my Canadian friends, especially Pascal Haegeli, Grant Statham, Karl Klassen, and Roger Atkins; and, of course, my longtime Alaska friends and mentors, Jill Fredston and Doug Fesler.

Thanks to my editors and project managers at Mountaineers Books: Kate Rogers, Margaret Sullivan, Kris Fulsaas, Janet Kimball, and especially Erin Moore.

Finally, a special thanks to my long-suffering wife, Susi, who put up with the seemingly endless days of work, all done after hours from my regular job, plus many weekends and holidays.

INTRODUCTION: WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?

I was astoundingly lucky to be born into a mountain culture and learn about mountains and avalanches from the top professionals in the country. When I was ten years old, my father, a volunteer ski patroller, took an avalanche class from Dr. John Montagne, who taught the first university avalanche class in the country at Montana State University in Bozeman. I remember he came home excited after a multi day course and tried to teach me what he learned. (And I also remember being not a particularly good student at the age of ten.)

Fifteen years later, after a successful ski-racing career, I landed a job doing avalanche control on the Bridger Bowl Ski Patrol in Bozeman, where I was trained by some of the best, most experienced avalanche professionals in the country. I took the quarter-long course from my father's avalanche instructor, Dr. Montagne, who later became my thesis advisor for an avalanche-related study for my masters in geology.

Ive worked doing mountain rescues in both Grand Teton National Park and Glacier National Park, served as director of avalanche control at Big Sky Ski Area in Montana, and worked with avalanche forecasters Jill Fredston and Doug Fesler at the Alaska Avalanche Center. And finally, for nearly three decades, Ive been the director of the Utah Avalanche Center, where you cant throw a snowball without hitting an avalanche expert.

I was trained in the system. In the system, everyone practices rigorous procedures and decision making, low-risk travel rituals, and disciplined communication learned by trial and error over many years by avalanche professionals.

The backcountry, on the other hand, is chaos. I see hundreds of people racing for powder, on skis, snowmobiles, snowboards, and snowshoes, and on foot. Some have avalanche rescue gear; some do not.

I see people routinely violate all the standard practices I was taught as a professional: People bunched up and talking instead of being spread out and paying attention; people traveling above other partiesconsidered attempted homicide in professional operations. I see people jump into zero-tolerance-for-error terrain, where an avalanche of any size would be certain death, when they could have easily chosen a gentler spur ridge off to the side with much safer consequences. I see people dive into huge, steep bowls on the first run instead of doing a few stability tests on smaller test slopes first. I seldom see people test their beacons before leaving the parking lot (required each morning by pros) or practice rescue techniques (required once per month by pros). And so on.

As a result, an average of 30 people die in avalanches each season in the United States and 15 per season in Canada, yet only 1.4 percent of these accidents occur to professional avalanche workers despite far greater exposure. Why is that?

This book on avalanche essentials presents a step-by-step system for safety and survival that I learned from 35 years as an avalanche professional. It presents systematic ways to make evidence-based decisions to travel safely in backcountry avalanche terrain, and explains what to do when things go wrong.

A TALE OF TWO ACCIDENTS

Below is a comparison of two actual avalanche accidents. In both cases, someone made a mistake. So why did one accident end in tragedy while the other did not? Can you spot what caused the difference in outcome?

The day after Christmas I got a call that the Salt Lake County Search and Rescue was looking for an overdue snowboarder. The previous day he had failed to pick up his girlfriend from the airport, and that night the sheriff discovered his vehicle parked on the road near Alta Ski Area. His roommates reported that he went up to take a quick backcountry run on his snowboard before he went to the airport on what happened to be the first day of a major winter storm.

That day our avalanche advisory had warned the public of rapidly increasing avalanche danger, especially on the northerly facing slopes. Based on the location of his vehicle and recent avalanche activity, we speculated that he had booted up the popular south-facing Flagstaff Ridge to take a run in the fresh powder on the north side of the ridge and must have triggered an avalanche there. The only encouraging news was that he almost always wore his avalanche rescue beacon so at least he would be easy to locate.