Welcome to All Aspects, a podcast where we explore, discuss, and celebrate adventure
culture and outdoor lifestyle.
It is our mission to educate, inform, and entertain our fellow adventurers about the
inherent risks that surround us every time we go outside to play, and to provide you
with the knowledge and tools to help you do the things you love the most and the safest
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Alright, let's get to the show.
What's your spirit animal today Dave?
My spirit animal is a sloth.
I'm getting ready to sloth.
Oh.
I don't know why.
It's my favorite animal.
I sloth you sloth, he shear it, sloths we all sloth.
Pretty much.
Yeah.
What's your spirit animal for today?
I'm going to use the Spanish verb chilar to chilax.
Sure.
Yeah.
Like chilamos.
We're going to chilamos together.
Okay.
With some llamas.
Well, in the spirit of that, let's chilamos on this episode two of our podcast.
And today I wanted to talk to you about something that I didn't really know anything about until
starting to hang out with you and the world that you're in, which is heuristic traps or
more like an easier way to describe them as human factor traps.
If you don't speak Greek for instance.
Which is that's the Greek root.
I do not.
And I don't speak psychological mountain nerd.
So you're saying you were unfamiliar with human factor traps.
You started hanging out with the physical embodiment of all of them, which is me.
You and your friends.
Yes.
Yeah.
I think that's accurate.
Okay.
So in the spirit of that, I wanted to, because I think the first episode we talked about
avalanche problems.
Yep.
And I think this.
How to make them simple.
This, this is sort of the next add on to that in a way.
Yeah.
Because we talked about the snow factors that can cause avalanches and how you can get in
trouble there.
But this is really more of the psychological approach of how we get ourselves into trouble.
We knew it was dangerous and we still went there anyway.
And we rationalized it to our friends and why we should do something really risky.
Totally.
Yes.
It's the equivalent of here, Dewey, hold my beer, watch this.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, that analogy, just to catch people up who aren't familiar.
Will you describe to me as simply as possible what the hell human factor traps are?
Okay.
So, nine out of 10 avalanche fatalities are attributed to human factor traps.
Okay.
And human factor trap is a way of saying, hey, we didn't have a good system to make
decisions, so we leaned on these stupid human tricks that get us into big trouble.
And the reason why they're very appealing is they're fast, take very little energy,
and you can do it when you're cold, tired, and hungry, and exhausted, and they sound
really truthy when you're saying it.
And I've fallen into all of these myself.
And when you say when you're saying it, you mean when you're saying it to yourself as
well.
So, we're trying to convince your riding partners why we should ski this 40-degree
bowl when it's considerable danger and we have an old snow problem.
And what happens is the way our brains work is we make up our minds, we make up an opinion,
and a feeling, and then we rationalize why that's true.
With these, with all these traps that you're talking about.
Yeah.
Or I guess that's how they become traps.
So, these are the classic ways of totally blowing it, stupid human tricks.
And you don't have to feel bad about identifying it in yourself or your partners because we
all share this.
This is how humans are hardwired.
And there's an advantage in simple environments without consequences because you're like,
hey, where are we going to eat tonight?
And you're like, well, that place is packed.
It must be good.
Let's go there.
And if you get it wrong, well, maybe you got a little problem.
But the stakes are low, right?
Yeah.
Where as the problem is when we're in the back country, it's what they call a wicked
learning environment.
Meaning we may do it wrong for a couple tours or many tours and get no feedback.
And they're like, well, we didn't trigger any avalanches.
I guess we're doing it right.
And because we don't have any positive or negative feedback, I guess, because even positive feedback
is sort of negative feedback in this exact scenario.
You're losing me there, Dave.
Keep it simple.
You're losing me like I'm a six-year-old.
If you do something wrong 10 times and you don't know you're doing it wrong, then you're
not doing it right.
Correct.
Like you're learning to do something.
It's like you're turning in your essay to your teacher and you never get any red marks
on it.
They just take it and they throw it in the recycle bin because they're like, I just can't
be bothered to read just paper.
But how are you supposed to know what if you did well or not?
Exactly.
OK.
Exactly.
So, we're going to learn a few things about the way to make decisions.
We're going to lean on these stupid human tricks, these human factor traps.
And the Greek word is heuristics.
And that comes from the same root as eureka.
I've got it.
It's like inspiration hit me.
Really?
Yeah.
That's where it comes from.
Heuristic.
The word is derived from eureka.
Yep.
I've got it instantly.
And you're like, well, is there any data to support this?
Maybe truthy.
No way.
OK.
Far out, huh?
Learn something new every day.
There you go.
So, can you run me through really quickly just each one of the classic human factor traps
and then maybe give me a quick example of what that would look like?
Yeah.
Why don't we run through them all and then we'll break them down individually.
How's that sound?
Great.
OK.
So, this is about 20 years ago.
Ground baking paper by Ian McCammoth.
And he leaned really heavily on social psychology from Danny Kahneman, who's a Nobel Prize winning
social psychologist from Israel.
And he's also New York Times bestseller, author.
He's a freaking genius.
And he basically upended economics and said, hey, listen, the fundamental underpinning
in economics is that humans are rational actors.
And that is just not true because I don't know any of those people.
And I'm certainly not one of those people because let's face it, you and I, we've dedicated
our lives to skiing.
And it's dangerous.
It's expensive.
And we've sacrificed a lot of opportunities to pursue that because it brings us joy.
And it makes our heart sing and we just love it more than anything else.
Right on.
OK.
I'm in line with that.
All right.
So, let's just assume that Danny Kahneman is right and he's got a million dollars for
this Nobel Prize that says he is right.
And it changed the world.
And I highly recommend you read his book or listen to him on some podcasts.
Phenomenal.
So the classic free plug on this.
Yeah, exactly.
So McCammon mined his work and said, hey, in avalanches, we see this all the time where
humans had a feeling or an opinion and they went with their gut and it really got them
into trouble.
And here's the classic six traps and they fall under the acronym of facets because we
know that facets, if you're an avalanche geek, those are the sugar crystals.
And in Colorado, those old snow week layers, that kills 95% of people.
So facets are bad and facets, the acronym for the human factor traps.
These are bad as well.
So we got familiarity.
Acceptance.
Commitment.
Expert halo.
Tracks and social proof.
Okay.
Oh, sorry.
Social.
Scarcity.
Yeah.
Some people flip them around, but we'll use.
Because it's a track.
Is a track social proof?
Yeah, exactly.
Okay.
Yeah, McCammon did it a little bit differently, but it's harder to remember the original paper
that he did.
So we'll go with a simplified version.
So we'll say tracks and then we'll say scarcity.
Gotcha.
Okay.
And then can you give up just really quick, because I don't want to bog down on each one
and dive into it, but could you give us, you know, let's just start off with familiarity.
What's an example of familiarity?
Well, Dave, I've skied this slope a thousand times and I've never seen an avalanche here.
Okay.
Which obviously when you're dealing with something that's unpredictable, snow, it sounds totally
ridiculous when we're sitting here.
Yeah.
But that's not an uncommon thing or that's not, yeah, that's a common thing to hear when
you're here.
You hear it all the time.
Always.
We did this last week.
Well, it's snow to foot.
Yeah.
So the key question there is, well, what's different?
Do we have exceptional conditions?
And what we're seeing now at the start of this year, the whole West is pretty much well below
average in snowpack.
So we're going to have a lot of old snow layers in places that don't usually have them.
And that is going to cause problems for a long time.
And so what we've done in the past is not going to be applicable when we have exceptional
conditions that are outside our normal experience.
Right.
And when someone says they've skied this slope a hundred times, a thousand times, what they
really mean is probably 10, maybe 15.
Right.
Shave 99% off of that number.
So they think they're pulling off a massive data set, but what they're really pulling
off is they're very limited human experience.
So they're pulling off a miracle.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay.
The next one is acceptance.
Can you give me an example?
Yeah.
Humans are social creatures and it's incredibly important for us to fit in with our clan,
with our group, with our pack, because we wouldn't have survived very long out on our
own.
We're designed to work together and dominate the planet.
And if you're the outcast, that can be pretty tough.
And so we can often be very reluctant to share an opinion that goes against the group or goes
against maybe the biggest loudmouth jerk in the group who's like, dude, really?
Come on.
You're worried about this?
It's going to be fine.
Just send it.
Yeah, just send it.
And so it can be very difficult to push back and feel like, oh, geez, I don't want to be
the negative net in the group.
And you know, Homer dismisses me as, come on, Flanders.
You know, don't be the negative net.
Just go along and have a good time.
Yeah, and that's interesting too, because sometimes even when you have a genuine question
that's not even doubting the decisions we're all making, it can come across as being the
negative Nancy.
Yep.
And that's, that will stop.
Go along to get along.
That will sometimes stop people from even bringing something up because they don't even want
to be perceived as being the negative Nancy.
It could also, as well, acceptance in a group is like, hey, if I ski this steep gnarly line,
I can blow it up on Instawebs and social media.
And all these people will think I'm sick.
And all these people are going to give me adulation.
And we see this in ski movies as well.
It's totally unrealistic.
And folks get avalanched all the time.
And we're like, yeah, this is amazing.
It's like literally theaters across the nation cheering people out running avalanches.
Yeah, that's wildly unrealistic.
And as an avalanche educator, I get that all the time.
Like, hey, why are you here to take your airy level too?
And they said, because I want to send the gnar midwinter in Colorado.
And I'm like, I'm sorry, that's just not going to happen very often.
You should pick up base jumping.
Exactly.
Or you should consider moving to a maritime snowpack.
Sure.
Yeah, go to BC.
OK, what is, let's talk about commitment.
Commitment.
That's the next one.
So let's say we're on our dream vacation on a hut trip and conditions are not good.
It's considerable danger with an old snow problem.
And there's an avalanche warning out.
And we're like, whoa.
But this is our one time to go into the hut this year.
And we had to cancel it last year because everybody got COVID.
And we've got to make this work.
And you're like, wow, the approach to the hut is super gnarly.
You need to go under huge avalanche shoots and be really exposed.
We're likely to fall into that commitment trap of we've already booked the reservation,
the money is sunk, we can't get it back, we're going no matter what.
Right.
Yeah, and that one's tricky too because the stakes don't even have to be that high.
Yeah.
It can be as simple as we're going to go ski this face today.
Yeah.
And we didn't have any backup plans.
And then the whole time we're going up this face, it's, man, the snow's not even looking
that good.
Or we're seeing signs of wind, like whatever, name anything.
But you're just committed.
We see a whole bunch of red flag, obvious clues, recent avalanches, cracks under our
skis, warmth, wind loading.
And we're just like, wow, but we didn't have any backup plan.
Right.
So if we get to the top of the bowl and we're trying to decide between going back down the
wind scoured skin track and skiing grass and rocks, or the wind loaded bowl at 40 degrees
at considerable, we're going to find a way to rationalize why skiing the bowl makes sense.
To convince ourselves that it's going to work.
Yeah.
And the tricky thing is you equated this kind of when I was learning about this, you equated
this, like all of these to, you know, we approach doing dangerous things logically, kind of like
what you're talking about.
But really when we do it, it's just being good at poker.
It's like, how good are you at playing this dicey game?
And so I think that's something that has always stuck with me of, especially when we're out
in the back country of like, do I really know what I'm doing?
Or do I have like a good full house?
Right.
Like, do I have a good feeling about this?
Yeah.
Or am I like certain because there is evidence to back up what we're talking about skiing?
Yeah.
And it's rarely certain in the snow back.
Yeah.
As certain as you could be, right?
Yeah.
By the way, there is zero correlation between our confidence and our accuracy.
Of course.
So if you ask me, this is a perfect segue to the next one, it's E for expert Halo.
If you say to me, Jeff, hey, how certain are you that the bowl isn't going to slide?
And if I say, I'm 100% certain that is a huge red flag and you just call me out because
the expert Halo is kicking in.
Where I have so many years of experience and so much training under my belt gives me a
false sense of security and it gives me a sense that I've mastered something that is
unknowable.
To some extent, the snowpack is never truly knowable.
And it's much like the game of chess versus the game of poker.
So chess, the pieces move in a reliable pattern and all the information is out there.
And so usually the best player wins because they have more skill.
But that's not like that with avalanches or poker because I can have a really strong
hand.
I might have a full house.
So I've got a couple of kings and three queens and I'm like, I'm going to push all my chips
into the middle.
We're going to ski the bowl and then you have a better hand and you whiten me out.
And I'm just like, oh, such bad luck.
Who could have foreseen this?
And you're like, well, if you run the odds, you might be confident that you're likely
to win, but there's no certainty there.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah, when we're dealing with a snowpack, we have to recognize that even as an expert,
the snowpack to an extent is unknowable.
And there's always a degree of risk that it could avalanche.
Right.
I think something that's interesting about this particular human factor trap, which is
the expert Halo, to me, almost seems like it goes the other way.
Oh yeah.
A bit, at least talking to you, because in our last podcast, you were talking about how
you know that sheer probability because of how much you've done this, sheer probability
itself means that you are living in kind of the weird zone of like freak accents and crazy
things.
My exposure time is 100 plus days a year in avalanche terrain times 30 years.
It's massive.
Yeah, it's thousands of days of exposure.
I was told there'd be no math on this podcast, by the way.
We're going to say that in every single episode, aren't we?
We might just have to get better at math.
But I think that's really interesting because you're aware of that fact that you're, but
then even with that knowledge rationally floating around your brain, it's still, anyone could
get out and just be like, oh, this looks sick and I have a good feeling about this.
And that comes from the school hard knocks where I was absolutely confident and certain
and we triggered an avalanche.
And then I was like, oh, and after that happens numerous times over your career, that illusion
of certainty is totally exploded.
You're just like, yeah, that way lies madness.
And on the flowchart of mastery, there's a fork and you start off as a novice.
You don't know what you don't know.
And it's kind of like the Dunning-Kruger effect where you're just really confident because
you've never seen it go bad badly.
You never had close calls.
And then as you get to an intermediate, you've seen it go wrong a couple times and you realize,
oh, this is way harder than I thought.
And then you've got a fork in the road.
And the false master is like, well, I've got my avalanche certs and you're like, great,
you showed up to a class and you paid your money and you did okay.
Good for you, Pat on the back.
And without a reliable process to make decisions that gives you feedback in a timely matter
on the spot, you're going to be lulled into think that you're nailing it.
And this is the false master.
And on the other side is Yoda, the true master.
And you have to be aware of your own incompetence and be super diligent with your decision-making
processes that have a lot of margin for error and redundancy built in and gives you feedback
along the way.
And that doesn't really exist in the avalanche world.
The system.
Yeah.
The current system that we've been using in the avalanche world, you don't finish a tour
and say, hey, we can see that we were in the red high-risk zone until Aspect Abbey.
That just didn't exist.
And so you and I would debrief at the tailgate over a beer and be like, well, what'd you think?
And I'm like, I don't know.
Felt good to me and feel good to you.
All right, high five.
We did it right.
Now we have a way to verify if what we did was actually roll in the dice or if it was
a good decision based off of information we had.
Again, can you give us feedback instantly?
If I get a little powder crazy and I ski over the steep rollover that you pointed out and
said, hey, that's red on the map.
We're not going there.
That's over the limit for today's avalanche forecast.
You can call that out on the spot and be like, hey, Jeff, that wasn't cool.
We said we weren't going to go into the night.
We're not going that way.
Yeah, we're not going that way.
We went to Crazy Town.
Okay.
And I'll be like, oh my God, sorry, I just kind of lost my mind there.
Fucking expert halo, Jeff.
Yeah.
All right, the next one is tracks.
Or yeah, tracks.
So oftentimes we'll see multiple tracks on the slope and that's the social proof that,
hey, they jumped off the bridge and they were just fine.
Right.
It didn't slide when they skied it.
Yeah.
And this is where it gets really tricky because with an old snow problem particularly, and
that's far and away the biggest killer, not just in Colorado, but in the whole U.S. and
we're going to have a ton of old snow problems in places that don't usually have that.
This is where the tracks lull you into safety.
And you think, oh, there's a hundred tracks in the slope.
Well, it only takes one person to hit that trigger point.
Think of it as a landmine.
And those trigger points are often where the snowpack is thinner along rocks or brush or
trees where the facets tend to grow.
And right now we have perfect conditions for growing facets.
And facets are just sugar, the old snow problem.
And so it doesn't matter how many tracks are on the slope.
If you've got an old snow problem, you could be the one that triggers it.
It could be tracked out wall to wall and then you find the sweet spot and boom, the whole
thing out of an inch.
Right.
It's freaky.
Freaky.
All right.
And then the last one, scarcity.
Yeah, scarcity.
And we're probably going to see that a lot this year where it hasn't snowed very much
at all.
Most of the country is at 60% or less of the normal snowpack.
So powder fever is going to be really high.
And we're going to have a weak old snow snowpack across the majority of the Western U.S. and
when it does finally start to snow, there's going to be a lot of pent up scarcity where
I haven't gotten my powder fix this year and it's super dangerous and it's going to stay
dangerous for a long period of time to that old snow problem heels, which takes forever.
And we're going to want to be getting after it.
And if I see tracks going in and I'm like, oh my God, they're stealing my powder.
They got it.
Yeah.
So that social proof and scarcity go hand in hand.
That's like a run on the bank.
And you're like, oh my God, I got to get my money out before they know that I don't know.
Yeah, exactly.
Crazy.
Okay.
So thanks for like breaking all those down and kind of giving an example of each one.
And now the question I ask is what do we do about it?
How do we, how do we, well actually before we jump into that, we are specifically talking
about backcountry skiing and snowboarding with these examples because that's how we really
interact with it.
But human factor traps, like they exist.
They rule our lives.
Like it's everything, right?
You could look at most car accidents or climbing accidents or any kind of high risk activity
that results in an accident.
You're like, you can probably attribute it to one of those human factor traps we just
went over.
Okay.
So this is a broader, for the purpose of this podcast, because this is where we live,
you know, this is our world.
Yeah.
We're going to stick to this.
Stick to the avalanches.
But for anyone listening, know that these can be applied to pretty much everything you
do.
Yeah.
As far as action sports, adventure, yeah, all that stuff.
And I wish I was immune to it as an expert, but I'm just as guilty of falling into human
factor traps as a novice.
Well, they're traps, man.
They're traps.
You fall into them.
Yeah.
By definition.
I think of it as like a tiger trap in the jungle, you know, where they got the palm
fronds and you fall in and you just never saw it coming.
So, okay.
I can see it a lot easier in other people, but I have real hard time seeing it myself.
Funny how it's easier to see the things that are pretty typical.
The projections, the problems with other people and not yourself.
All right.
Okay.
So then now let's jump into what do we do about this?
Yeah.
How can we take action on this?
You know, to me, after just hearing all that stuff and I'm thinking through my head like,
oh yeah, I've got to feel that.
I've thought that.
I've been in groups that did that.
So where do we go?
What's our solution?
So about 20 years ago, McCammon did a great job of identifying, basically diagnosing the
thing that gets us killed.
We knew it was dangerous and somehow we had a feeling that we wanted to do it and we rationalized
why it was a smart thing to do.
You're referring to his paper that he released in like 2002?
So that's the equivalent of saying, hey, we discovered cancer and we know how to diagnose
it.
But we have no way of treating it.
Good luck with that.
So that was the paper 20 years ago.
That was 20 years ago and there had been nothing in the field to treat the human factor traps.
We've basically said we've identified cancer, job done.
But okay, so then, yeah, I mean, I guess you're not really being caught about this stuff and
like rescue courses.
Well, you're often taught, hey, facets, these are the classic traps to watch out for.
Did they exist?
But until now, we didn't have a way to give you live feedback and say, hey, you're about
to do something really risky.
Which of these human factor traps are you falling into, do you think?
So basically you and I would be at the top of the bowl and I'd be trying to con you into
why we're going to go ski this sketchy line.
And you're like, man, I don't know.
I don't feel good about this.
But it'd be really hard to push back with anything concrete except to just have an argument.
And it's you opinionating and me opinionating and who's going to dig in their heels and
try to bludgeon the other person with their opinion.
Okay, so then I have a question.
Yeah.
I feel like I know where you're going, but in that exact scenario, I think there would
be a term that would probably be thrown around, which one of us would probably say, I got
a good feeling about this or my gut is telling me your intuition.
So where in the grand scheme of this, of these traps, like where is intuition or your gut
feeling?
Where do we want to listen to that?
And where does that lead us into these traps?
That's a great question.
So intuition is a one way street.
If you listen to your intuition, which is your subconscious mind processing faster than
your conscious mind, and it's recognizing patterns, you can use it to step back and be more conservative.
Okay.
You're like, Hey, something doesn't feel right.
I don't like this.
I'm out.
Okay.
That's like when you're getting the bad vibe.
Yeah.
And I can't put my finger on it, but something doesn't feel right.
That's when intuition can be very powerful and super preventive.
But you can't use it the other way.
You can't say, Hey, I'm at the top of the bowl, I feel good about this because what
that is saying is I feel good about skiing two feet of powder on a considerable day on
a 45 degree slope.
That's like the dopamine overriding and being like, you're already getting the chemical
reward in your brain.
Guilty as charged.
Okay.
So the gut feeling really the only way to properly use that is in a conservative manner
to take a step back, take a macro view on something and be like, I think, wait, I think
we might be up to something wrong.
Yeah.
And it's a huge red flag for me.
It's a full stop.
If I'm working with a team on the radio, if I ever hear anyone say I feel good about
it, it's full stop face to face talk.
Why?
Because I'm a touchy field of guy.
I want to hug it out, but not on the job.
Sure.
Because we are not risking people's lives based on feelings.
We want to see a large body of data with a justifiable process that stands up to rigor.
Okay.
So we need to have, if you and I go out riding and I say, Dave, I feel good about this, it's
going to be pretty hard for me to go back to your wife and tell her why you didn't come
home.
It's because I felt good about it.
Right.
Or that doesn't hold up in court as a mountain guide.
It's like, hey, what's your logical, defensible process that will hold up to a cross examination
on the witness stand?
Well, that's almost like where we make the joke.
If someone feels good about something, just ask them why three times.
Yeah.
And it'll all fall apart.
Right.
It's hilarious.
You're just like, hey, I'm sorry, Jeff, I don't have a shiny guides badge and I'm not an
internationally certified mountain guy with decades worth of experience.
But it says here on aspect Davy, that's going in the red zone.
Could you just explain to me like I'm a six year old, why we're going to go there?
Why we're going to do this?
Yeah.
And if you ask someone why like two or three times, usually it just all unravels.
Right.
And it comes down to because I'm an expert and I say so.
Okay.
So is the, you know, we joke around about even more out ski touring, we joke around about
just asking why over and over is almost a way to just so sounds funny.
But is that a valid tool to kind of help?
Socrates is a big fan of it.
And I have to.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, we've done such a deep dive in, you know, I've personally read every
single avalanche fatality in the last 11 years in the US and the patterns, they just, the
signal stands out through the noise.
You see the same patterns over and over again.
And what we wanted to do with aspect avy is give your team a tool so that everyone is
looking at the same information.
You don't have to go off of feelings or opinions.
You can go off of objective data that doesn't care that you haven't skied powder this year.
Right.
We care that this is the driest winner and X number of years and we've got old snow layers
up the wazoo and it's going to be dangerous for a while.
It's just saying, Hey, these are the high risk slopes for today's avalanche forecast.
And you decide whether you're going to go or not.
And it's very simple framework.
Like if we have a stoplight and we see red, we know all know what that means and we act
accordingly.
And if we see green, we know exactly what that means.
But where it gets tricky.
Do I go through the yellow?
Do I hit the gas or the break?
Right.
And am I going to make it through this time or not?
And so there's two different things going on in our brains.
One is a decision.
If it's red, I stop.
That is a decision.
If it's green, I go.
That is a decision.
But yellow requires judgment.
And that's where the human factors traps.
They come in real hurry.
They just come stampeding it.
And usually if I'm using one human factor trap, I probably got a couple other riding
along with it.
And they kind of stack.
Like if you're in like a video game, it'd be like buff on, buff on, buff.
And so Coniman says explicitly says, you know, here's the reason why people use the human
factor traps.
It's because they don't have a good alternative.
They don't have a simple, fast way of making a good decision.
OK.
So this is, it's a fallback.
Yeah.
Because there is no other alternative.
And then it gets even trickier.
So if we're at altitude, if we're skiing in Colorado, often the summits are 12,000 feet.
OK.
Most people are living about 5 or 6,000 feet.
Or below that.
Or below if you're coming from sea level.
So you're hypoxic.
And you've automatically lost, oh, let's just call it 30% of your IQ, your brain power.
And your brain only runs off a glycogen.
It doesn't really run off of fat.
So if I'm bonking, I can't think.
If my legs are tired, my brain is really tired because it demands a ton of energy.
So now maybe we've lost 50% of our IQ.
And then you throw in powder fever and scarcity.
Oh my gosh, this is our one chance to go touring.
We're starting to draw, like, paying a really compelling picture for this.
Exactly.
So we've designed Aspect Abbey to be an antidote to that.
To just say, hey, listen, it's giving you the stoplight and it says red.
So even if I'm quite depleted, maybe I didn't get a good night's sleep.
My legs are tired, so my brain is tired.
And I'm hypoxic because I'm up at 12,000 feet.
It's pretty easy to be like, oh yeah, I remember.
Red means stop.
Yeah, let's not do that.
Right.
Yeah.
So the Socratic method is super helpful of asking why from your partners.
But I can't really do that so easily with myself.
Because usually the person that I need to convince to chill out is usually myself because I'm
a little too excited.
And to be clear, we, you know, kind of this is a bit of a plug for the app in this episode.
A seamless product plug.
Because it is genuinely one of the first tools that helps address this.
Yep.
It gives you live feedback where you can say, hey, if we go there, it's going to be in
the red.
That's going to be high risk.
Yeah.
And you don't need, you know, like that's not like turning your brain off.
Because I feel like some people are like, oh, like blindly trust an app.
Which like, that's not what we're saying.
This is just giving you really clear, you know, it's not going to get hypoxic.
You know, it's just, it's similar to that's red based on this algorithm and based off
of the snow conditions and avalanche forecast and all that stuff.
And then our live input, if we're like, hey, right, the forecast is wrong about 20% of the
time and we need to verify it and localize it for where we are right now, live in the
snow.
And if we're seeing these obvious clues of shooting cracks and lump thing and rapid loading,
we'll say, hey, it's considerable where we are.
Right.
And we're going to see a lot more red on the, on the map.
Yeah.
This is a really interesting topic because I guess for me, I was just sort of surprised
as I started learning about it, how applicable it is to so many things.
And I'm someone who definitely has spent my life just taking a lot of risks, doing a lot
of high risk stuff.
Yeah.
Both in like, I guess my professional life and then also just things I like to do.
Yeah.
Like, jump, jump, jump.
Well, but, but beyond like jumping off of cliffs and their blakes, you know, like all
that kind of stuff.
And I, I was really shocked when I started learning about this topic that I'd never been
taught it by any of my peers or coaches or anything before, or that it hadn't really
come across, you know, and this was after the paper you've been referencing came out.
I mean, you know, this information has been flowing around out there.
So I, maybe my final kind of question to you is, like, is there a reason why this isn't
more known or can we help people?
Is there a way we can help people learn about this more easily?
I mean, we'll put a, we'll put a link to the paper that we're talking about in the show
notes for this podcast, but like, what can we do to kind of educate our friends about
this?
Um, yeah, that's a great question.
Um,
Are there resources?
I'm not trying to tee you up in any way.
I'm genuinely asking.
It's kind of a, yeah, for me, um, you know, I had a life changing event when I got avalanched
in Italy in the Ortler range.
And we were really lucky.
We walked away without a scratch, but you know, we went for about 15, 1800 vertical feet
over three cliff bands.
And we ended up right on top and we were fine.
But that caused me to realize, Hey, my expert Halo, I lost it back there in that avalanche
somewhere.
It's gone.
I was the false master.
I thought I had it nailed, but I was coasting and I didn't have a really reliable decision-making
process.
And so that sent us, sent me down this route of, Hey, there's got to be a better way to
play poker where I can play the odds in a very conservative manner.
And so I don't have to stress about being avalanched.
And, um, so, uh, Connaman's book was, was a seminal moment for me and it kind of tied
everything together.
I'm like, this is what we're doing in the back country as an industry, as a profession
and me personally, and then my friends and then my colleagues.
And it caused me to question everything.
So I'd say that's a great place to look is podcasts or books with Danny Connaman or
his colleague and also Nobel Prize winner, Richard Thaler.
And we've basically incorporated a lot of their work, um, into the app, right?
Because we know that humans are gonna human.
So let's make it really simple to do the right thing.
Let's give you feedback in the moment.
If you get it wrong to be like, Hey, get back on track and try to make it simple and fun.
Right.
You know, try to make it enjoyable so that's not onerous.
So it doesn't take an hour to do your tour plan.
You're like, Nope, we just did our tour plan.
Five minutes.
We've got three good looking options in the clear.
We're going to stay out of the red.
Let's go out in the field and see what conditions are like.
And we'll choose the one that has the best snow and the safest snow.
Yeah.
I mean, on our drive down here, you and I were talking, I was telling you that I think
something that's interesting about, right?
It's not even interesting.
I just find very refreshing whenever we go out or have people with us is we always have
like three or four different options.
And so it helps us avoid a lot of, you know, scarcity or commitment.
I mean, we're even expert Halo stuff because we'll all be experiencing the same conditions
and be able to make a decision like, Hey, let's go to the other spot.
It seems dicey, you know, like, yeah.
And I love, you know, we're going to go out here on Christmas Eve with our buddy, Nikki,
and he's fresh off the plane from LA.
And what I love is it takes the pressure off me.
If we're all using aspect Abby, because Nikki can be like, Hey guys, I just showed up.
It was my first day on skis this year.
Not this year.
Yeah.
Very good skier.
But he's like, Hey, I don't want to ski that line.
It's in the red.
Right.
And I can be like, Oh, thanks for checking me, Nikki, because, you know, the pilot has
a co-pilot to like, watch your back.
And that feedback that you get for your trusted friends or maybe your romantic partner who
know you really well is invaluable to grow as a human.
And for me to grow as a mountain professional, I need objective feedback.
It doesn't make, it doesn't do me any good to be in an echo chamber.
Right.
And, you know, one thing I'd like to tie in, and this is totally for the geeks out there
who are still listening.
And if you're bored at this point, I totally understand.
You're like, Hey, I'm ready to tap out and get it.
But for those diehards, what we're dealing with is, is basically a guerrilla warfare
situation where the Rand court back in the Vietnam, you mean our relationship with the
snow, you got it.
Yeah.
Okay.
It's they coined this term, this acronym, VUCA, V is for volatile.
C is for complex.
U is for V then you then.
Oh, sorry.
Let's back it up.
Let's I'm the dyslexic one, bro.
Volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.
And that is guerrilla warfare to a T or urban warfare where things can go wrong in a hurry.
And it's a complex system, so one tiny variable change in the whole system blows up and you
may never have a warning.
That's very much the avalanche.
Sounds familiar.
Yeah, exactly.
So in, if you're in a VUCA situation, which if you're dealing with avalanches, that's
what we're in.
Like no matter what, no matter what, that's just how it is.
Okay.
Like if you're an avalanche train, it's a VUCA situation.
If you've got snow on the ground, I think that's a really, a really, a really, a really
useful way of looking at this probably.
Yeah.
It's guerrilla warfare and you're not going to see it coming a lot of times and there's
going to be an ambush and it could be quite deadly.
So Kahneman's approach is like, listen, when you're in a VUCA scenario, unless you have
a really clear, robust red light, green light system that's low energy, go, no, go, it's
going to be really hard to avoid the heuristic traps, the human factor traps.
We are just going to lean on them.
They feel good.
They're fast.
They sound good.
They're low energy.
They sound truthy.
Yeah.
They sound truthy and at the moment, they're hard to push back against.
Well, and the rest of the group is probably falling into the trap too.
Exactly.
And I can't emphasize this enough how important it is to have a very clear, go, no, go system
that's objective.
And I know we're going a deep dive into this and people are like, Rand Corp, what the hell
is that got to do with avalanches?
But like at this point, I don't even care because I'm so passionate about this and this
is what saved lives.
This is the human factor that gets injected because if the avalanche danger is sketchy,
it's not a problem until humans enter the equation.
Right.
If avalanche slides, it doesn't matter unless someone's stuck in it.
If the avalanche slides in the forest and no one's there to hear it, it's okay.
The forecast center will still know that though.
Yeah, they'll sleep it out.
They're very good at what they do.
Yeah.
All right.
So I feel like we've covered this pretty well and I appreciate this conversation and
offering some of the tools.
What are maybe some of the last thoughts you want to leave people listening to this with
steps to go forward?
For one for me would be, hey, if you're getting the bad vibe, stand on the top of something,
speak up.
Your intuition's a one-way street.
And if you're getting that gut feeling and it's not a positive one, you should speak
up and I would say the rest of the people should listen to that person because that's
something else going on.
It's not like woo-woo-voodoo stuff.
It's just, I think we've all experienced a gut feeling that we pushed away and then
something went wrong.
Do you have any other, maybe just like one or two quick pieces of wisdom to leave people
with before we wrap up?
Yeah.
So have an objective system that gives you feedback immediately.
And so far in the avalanche world, I've only seen that aspect.
Gabby does have.
We have one app.
Yep.
Okay.
And if you don't have that, you're going to have to be really smart and really tuned
in and ask why a lot and be ready to be unlikeable.
We'll put a whole bunch of resources in the liner notes for the podcast.
Sure.
And there's a great Malcolm Gladwell podcast on this about follow the data.
Oh, is this the Spock one that you had me listen to like a year ago?
Yeah.
That one is good.
It's called pull the goalie.
Yeah.
So in hockey, yeah.
They normally pull the goalie when they're down by a goal or two or three with about
a minute, minute and a half to go.
Sure.
Because that is the socially acceptable thing for the coach to do.
But the numbers say the coach should pull it at five minutes or maybe even 10 minutes.
And in fact, if you're the underdog going against a championship caliber team, you should
probably pull the goalie in the first period.
The whole game.
Because this is your only chance and you're probably going to fail miserably and lose
12 to zip and the social cost for the coach, like if you're in Canada, they're going to
burn the Coliseum down.
They're like, you pulled the goalie at 10 minutes left of the game.
Now we lost six to zero instead of three to zero and it's humiliating.
So you need to be prepared to do the right thing.
And the right thing is defined by what the data says is a smart play.
So getting back into how this relates to avalanche stuff.
You need to be able to stand your ground and tell your friends, we're not skiing this.
This is our no go terrain for the day.
We said that in our tour plan and you're going to have to be super clever and just keep asking
them why and hopes to coax them around.
But I think it'd be a way more persuasive tool to show them your phone or if they've
got it on their own phone and say, hey, that's in the red.
Why are we going base jumping?
Or at very least that gives you an easy out of being like, I'm not doing that because
here's why this is because I'm not and you can always bribe your friends be like, tell
you what, I'm like, I don't want to do this.
I think this is a bad idea all by all of our post-ride beers when we get down safely.
I haven't tried that one before, but yeah, I think it's great for me as a check as a
professional and you know, you could speak truth to power.
Yeah, let's admit it.
There's a power differential when we go out touring and most people are going to defer
to the mountain guide or the senior person in the group or the person who talks the loudest
and is the baddest rider in the group.
Check the most backflips.
Yeah, exactly.
And this is a way of leveling the playing field and saying, hey, you know, I don't have
the years of experience that you do.
However, I don't have all those experiences of getting avalanche either.
And this is what the data says.
And as a professional, if I'm working with another guide, I make it super clear, especially
if they're an aspirant that means like assistant guide.
I'm like, hey, listen, your job is to watch my back.
And Dave, if I miss anything, you need to bring it up to check you to check me.
And if it's in front of the clients, so be it.
My ego has no place in our decision making process or our safety process.
And if I'm working in a team that's so dysfunctional that someone's ego is so fragile, they can't
have their logic questioned.
I don't want to be part of that.
Probably shouldn't be a mountain guide either.
Exactly.
Oh, they're pre-medanans.
They're delicate lotus flowers.
I know, man.
I hang out with them almost every day.
Well, sweet, man.
Thank you for having this conversation.
I feel like this is, I've even learned more about this.
Just having this back and forth with you.
Do you have any kind of last word before we wrap this thing up?
Cool.
Cut.
Yeah.
If you don't have your own system worked out to be super clear and super simple and
easy to do.
We're going to use the image doctor traps.
And then your only pushback from that is to be really unlikeable and to just keep asking
why.
And that is a really difficult social cost to bear.
And I've done it before and it's ruined friendships, but I was like, well, it's better than dying.
So I would say dive into these, check out the podcast and the liner notes because they're
actually really enjoyable and what I use for avalanche courses where they think, oh, we're
going to spend a lot of time in snow pits.
And I'm like, the answer is not in the snow pit.
The answer is between your psychological approach.
And they're actually really fun and interesting thought experiments to play.
And it's fun to grow and learn.
And the feedback is pretty much universal.
I'm like, oh, that was so cool.
I learned a lot.
I agree.
I think that having read and listened to those resources, going out, the more you learn about
something, it adds layers of complexity to stuff, obviously.
Yeah, nuance, curiosity.
Yeah, I feel like it's given me a new view on when we go out and tour, like beyond just
kind of the standard.
So it blew my doors off when I read or heard about these.
And I think it's often the ah-ha phenomenon of when someone labels it, you're like, yes,
I just didn't have the words for that.
That's what that thing is.
Yes, I've experienced that, but I didn't know how to talk about it with my partners.
And I was so frustrated and helpless at the time.
And now I can label it and identify it, hopefully, in the field and spot it coming.
Well, hell yeah, man.
Yeah.
That's all I got.
All right.
Great.
Thanks for listening.
I'll see you in the next backcountry.
Peace.
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