Avalanche Tips

bacon serves many purposes in the backcountry. it can be used for snacking on, skinning, or helping avi dogs locate you if buried

Addition:
The 10 Most important Avi tips.

1) Remember that avalanche classes, books and videos are only the very first step. The mountains have to teach you the rest. The average avalanche victim is very skilled in their sport but their avalanche skills almost always lag seriously behind. Most people not only overestimate their avalanche skills but they vastly overestimate them. How much time have you spent developing your skiing skills? How much on avalanche skills? See what I mean?

2) Call the local avalanche bulletin. Talk to a local ski patrol.


3) Look for all the Indian Signs.
• The best sign of avalanches are other avalanches
• Collapsing and cracking of the snowpack
• Recent heavy loading of new or especially wind-loaded snow
• Rain on new snow or rapid warming of cold dry snow.


4) Continually do active tests. Push a ski pole into the snow, cut out small blocks with your mitten and pull on them, jump on test slopes, trundle cornices.


5) If you know how, dig a snowpit in several representative spots. Do compression tests and Rutschblock tests. (Shovel shear tests don’t work very well.) And NEVER base your entire stability evaluation on just one snowpit test.


6) Practice safe travel techniques, one at a time, get out of the way at the bottom, have an escape route planned, spoon in your tracks, do ski cuts, etc.


7) See a therapist. Character flaws might provide your friends with good gossip but in the mountains they will kill you. Almost all accidents involve the human factor. Ego, pride, stubbornness, euphoria, goal blindness, haste, anger, the list goes on and on (See Couloir IX-2) Staying alive in the mountains means making decisions based on facts and not on emotions.

8) Just in case the above tips don’t work, carry rescue equipment, beacon, shovel, collapsible probe. (Screw together ski pole probes don’t work very well and they are the first things you’ll loose in an avalanche.)


9) You need to swim hard in avalanche debris to stay on the surface. You can’t swim with things attached to your feet and hands. Never wear safety straps or pole straps. Always wear releasable bindings. Rig up snowboard bindings with a ripcord so you can get out of them in a hurry.

10) Remember, you can never push the safety arrow to 100%, but by doing all of the above, you can get close. Take comfort in the fact that the old saying “All the avalanche experts are dead,” is absolutely not true, never has been true. In fact, 99 percent of the ones I know have spent half their lives in dangerous avalanche terrain and they’re still very much alive.

i totally thought that was a typo at first, but now it makes sense

and remember that a studfinder from home depot does NOT serve as a beacon. or bacon for that matter

Brazilian Nut effect (new idea on how to survive)

The amount of knowledge we have about snow avalanches has increased immensely over the past several decades. Using this information, experts are constantly reformulating survival techniques and devising improved safety gear. The Avalung came out of knowledge that avalanche victims are frequently poisoned to death by their own exhalations. Beacon improvements come from knowing how important things like reliability and ease-of-use are to a quick search. Knowing how violent being ‘lanched is, experts now recommend keeping your backpack tightly strapped when in avalanche terrain so it’ll protect your spine if you take a ride.

More, experts are re-thinking what you need to do while you’re caught in a snow slide. The recommended plan used to be fight and swim — do anything to stay on top or escape to the side. This appears to be changing. Dale Atkins, who investigated avalanche accidents for years while working with the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, is promulgating a new way of looking at survival. In an excellent presentation, he recommends one thing when you’re caught: Don’t bother with attempts to swim or fight. Instead, get your hands in front of your face, keep them there, and if you’re buried do anything to make an air pocket when the slide stops. (Or if you have an Avalung, concentrate on getting it in your mouth and keeping it there.)

Beyond the importance of a breathing space, the key concept Atkins covers is that while a snow avalanche behaves somewhat like a river or waterfall, it is actually a “granular flow,” meaning a snow avalanche is a bunch of solid particles falling down a mountain. Such behavior is similar to dumping sand out of a wheelbarrow down a hillside. In a granular flow, larger or less dense objects tend to rise to the surface. For example, snowmobiles are twice as likely to stay on the surface of an avalanche than a human. And humans tend to rise to the top as well, hence the large percentage of people avalanched who end up unburied. He calls this the “Brazil nut effect,” as when you shake a can of mixed nuts and all the larger nuts rise to the top. As for swimming versus concentrating on an air pocket, the point of this concept is that swimming and struggling have less to do with ending up unburied than simple physics. Thus, working to create an air pocket may be more important than things (like swimming) that keep your hands away from your face.

As for gear, the reality of the Brazil nut effect means that avalanche airbags are quite possibly as effective as their makers claim they are, and truly worth developing as a viable avalanche safety device. I’m certain we’ll see this happen — it’ll be interesting.

Following is a list of gear you should carry or have in your group if you are going into the backcountry:


Snowshoes
Shovel
Beacon
Probes
First Aid
(see suggested content list below)


Slope meter
Snow saw
Map and compass
Whistle
Climbing skins
Skin wax or climbing wax
Repair
(see suggested content list below)


Food, Water, Extra clothes


Repair Kit/Survival Kit

matches/lighter/firestarter
knife
extra binding parts
pocket tool with posi-drive screwdriver
wire, duct tape
epoxy, strip screw inserts, steel wool
tin cup, candle
headlamp
extra clothes, gloves, hat, socks
space blanket, bivy sack
charcoal warmers
extra food
extra batteries


First Aid Kit

latex gloves
tape
steri-strips or butterfly bandages
gauge rolls - 2
band-aids
ace bandage
variety sterile dressing
triangular bandages - 3
blister treatments
neosporin or equivelent
sunscreen
pain medication
safety pins
strong scissors
pocket mask
airway
sam splint or wire splint



Thats all for now, sorry to whore the post just tring to pack it with info

PZers

bacon is soooo good. everytime i go skiing i get a bacon egg and cheese muffin at micky ds.

saftey bump.

yea, this really is a good thread, and I'm joking around and all, but avalanches are serious shit. (not the chevy's tho) This has some good info, and if you're inexperienced, don't think because you're a good skier that you will be fine. Just don't go, as much as it may suck. But it's better than dying

i took a 3 day ava corse! it was really good, i went to the sliverton ava school! i also have a vid from a ava i started a couple years ago, check it out!!

take a female along

im at scool, and cant type up all my avy knowledge, but no ones posted this one yet. and im dead serious. yea yea, i almost never ski with a chick, but its proven that when a girl is along or any female, whatever, that avy danger goes down. guys dont make dumb decisions, or they try, and the female steps in with better judgement. sure the guy might try to impress the chick and do something more stupid, but really, the statistics are up, and girls contribute to something like 2% of all human triggered avalanches.

just something to think about.

bump for some more tips.

word good thread, theier are some sites you can get more info on it

Here's some advice:

Either buy a beacon, probe, shovel and a level one avi course

OR

STAY THE FUCK OUT OF THE BACKCOUNTRY

I always either dig a snowpit on the aspect I'm skiing or talk with somebody has before I ski it.  There is no way you can assess the avalanche danger without having any idea what the snowpack is like.  For all you know, there could be a layer of faceted snow four feet down that is ready to collapse as soon as you step onto it.  Even after I've done that I'll still kick/saw off a couple cornices or jump on the snow at the top of a run before dropping in. 

Also, remember to keep all members of your party in sight at all times.