You know, there's a common analogy for risk, explaining risk.
It's like, hey, if you have a block of Swiss cheese, you can
squirt the mustard and mayo and it'll pass right through those
holes in the cheese, right?
But if you slice it and you put a bunch of those layers on top of
your sandwich, the mustard and mayo can't get through anymore.
Because you've added too many layers of cheese so the holes
don't line up anymore.
So it protects your bread from getting soggy.
So these are risk treatments that we're adding to enhance the
quality of our sandwich and lower our risk while we're doing
inherently dangerous things.
We're talking about enhancing the quality of our safety
sandwich today.
There you go.
Exactly.
That's the tagline right there.
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 way possible.
All Aspects is brought to you by AspectAvy.
AspectAvy is on a mission to save lives by making avalanche
safety simple.
It's the only app that tells you where the high and low risk
zones are for today's avalanche danger.
With a suite of built in tools like forecast verification,
slope meter and gear checklist, AspectAvy is the new safety
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Remember, there are dozens of apps that get you into the
back country, but there's only one that's designed to bring you
home.
And that's AspectAvy.
Go to aspectavy.com to learn more or download the app to
start your 30 day free trial.
Thank you, AspectAvy, for making this show possible and
thank you for listening.
All right, let's get to the show.
Today, where do polar bears put their money?
I don't know, Jeff.
Snow banks, Dave.
Snow banks.
Oh, come on.
I should have seen that one coming.
Jeez.
Well, Jeff, what are we talking about today, man?
This is your topic.
Oh, yeah, let's do a deep dive into travel techniques.
Okay, cool.
I like that.
So, like, do you want to just give me a rundown on kind of
what you think people need to know?
Yeah, I mean, I think let's take a little myth but I'm
going to take a little myth busters approach to this.
Because a lot of times folks are making a classic mistake
where they've chosen the wrong terrain or they find out the
snowpack is way more unstable than was forecasted.
And they're like, oh, let's use travel techniques to make up
for really poor terrain choices.
And so you'll hear the classic thing of, let's just ski at
one at a time.
It'll be all right.
And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, huge red flag.
Great time to stop.
The reason why we want to use travel techniques is to minimize
our risk even further.
We want to choose terrain that's in line with the avalanche
danger and the problem types that it's going to be low risk.
But then the travel techniques we do are like a couple extra
layers piled on top of risk mitigation.
And it's super important to make sure we're clear on why we're
using the right travel technique at the right time.
Okay, so you're saying that travel techniques can only be used in
like, or like in concert or I don't know, like you can't use
travel techniques to circumvent bad conditions.
They can only be used to like help you stay safer once you
already made other decisions to keep you in like a low risk
scenario.
Yeah, yeah, you want to be choosing the right terrain for
the day's avalanche conditions.
And then this is our last bit of risk mitigation that we stack
on top.
And so, you know, there's a common analogy for risk explaining
risk is like, hey, if you have a block of Swiss cheese, you can
squirt the mustard and mayo and it'll pass right through those
holes in the cheese, right?
But if you slice it and you put a bunch of those layers on top
of your sandwich, the mustard and mayo can't get through anymore
because you've added too many layers of cheese so the holes
don't line up anymore.
So it protects your bread from getting soggy.
So these are risk treatments that we're adding to enhance the
quality of our sandwich and lower our risk while we're doing
inherently dangerous things.
We're talking about enhancing the quality of our safety
sandwich today.
There you go.
Exactly.
That's the that's the tagline right there.
Yeah.
Okay, well then let me ask a maybe like a stupid question, but
one that probably not everyone knows the answer to right off
the bat except the tone.
Yeah.
You know, do we ever want to go ski touring or go out in the
back country alone?
Well, we need to choose the days appropriately.
I prefer to ski tour with friends because it's very social.
However, I will go out on some solo missions and maybe it's
just because I don't have much time or couldn't line up
partners or maybe I'm looking to just spend some alone time.
But keep in mind that if it's really cold weather or stormy
or we're out of communications, that could be a very serious
tour in a hurry.
So you may want to choose those days when the weather is good.
It's not too cold and maybe start off early in the day.
So if something goes wrong, there's plenty of time for help
to come get to you if you have a way of communicating with
the outside world.
So you may choose to go to one of your local areas that is
good cell phone reception.
That maybe other people are around or you've got something
like say a Garmin in reach where you can text out and get
help on the way.
But I'd be reluctant to, you know, the worst case scenario
would be like super cold day, really bad weather, poor visibility,
probably sketchy avalanche conditions as well.
You're out there on your own and no communications.
All of a sudden that's becoming a really, really high risk
proposition. That's a super sketchy sandwich.
Yeah, but for like ideal group, usually three is about my
magic number because you've got two people to help three total.
Yeah, two people to help or rescue in theory.
If one person's hurt or gets avalanched, but it's also very
nimble and it's just the right size socially as well, where
you can often make decisions pretty quickly.
And reach consensus much easier than say a group of like five
or six people.
Large groups are really tricky to manage unless there's a
clearly defined leader.
If I'm guiding, it was a clear hierarchy and it's a lot easier
to facilitate discussions because I take a leadership role.
But often in a group of friends or peers, if you've got like
six people or more or five, it could be quite awkward and
people have a hard time navigating that and just the
size of the group actually becomes pretty unwieldy and it's
hard also to implement some of the travel techniques that can
up our safety margin as well.
So the size of your group is part of the travel technique
in itself.
Yeah, and to be honest, like if it's a day where conditions
are a bit sketchy, I'm really not psyched on being in a large
group. I'd much rather be in two groups of friends or a group
of friends, I'd much rather be in two groups of three and just
say, hey, you guys go that way.
We'll go this way and we'll keep in radio contact.
We'll meet at the top or just choose really reasonable terrain
that's got a big safety barge.
And so you can expect if you're in a group of four or more,
stuff's going to get squirrely and the likelihood of miscommunication
or making aggressive decisions goes up really fast.
So when you say stuff is going to get squirrely, what are you
referring to specifically?
Oh, just the human factor traps.
It's much harder to make a decision and reach a consensus
in a large group.
So you'll often start leaning on the classic human factor
traps we've talked about in a previous podcast and they'll
get turned right up because it's really hard to have a
framework for get everyone on the same page.
Shane was brought in a bug.
If you've got aspect avi, you can all be on the same page and
say, says here, that's red.
Let's not ski the bull.
Let's see the wine on the ridge.
Sound good?
All right, everybody on board.
Let's do it.
And then that can really facilitate it.
So it's just that consensus element that's the more voices
in there, the harder it may be.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, if you ever cook dinner with five people, I mean,
it's madness.
You know, two people is about right.
Maybe three.
Yeah.
Okay, well, then let's jump into it.
Let's start.
Let's start with uphill travel right off the bat.
So how do you move your group through the terrain and lower
your risk as much as possible?
Yeah.
So one of the classic things would be if you're moving uphill
when you're on the skin track, you would space out a bus
length apart.
And that seems really simple, but it's amazing how really
intelligent people struggle with this concept.
And what happens is it's fine when you're cruising uphill
until you get to switchbacks.
And if it's it totally falls apart.
So if this is our kick turn, if I'm in the back and you're
in the front, I need to maintain that school bus length
not on the skin track like where if you're dragging a string.
But yeah, there's a circle of stress that you're putting on
the snowpack and one I'm putting on the snowpack.
We don't want those to ever overlap.
You don't want the Venn diagram of snow stress to start happening.
That would be the Venn diagram of doom.
Yes.
Be very unfortunate.
The doom diagram.
Yeah.
And the reason why we're spreading out as a standard
precaution, we've hopefully chosen low risk terrain for the
day, have lunch conditions, but we're further adding on those
slices of cheese that was risk treatments by spreading our
weight out.
And so if there's a land mine on a weak spot, like particularly
with an old snow problem, if we've got five of us all crammed
up together talking, we're putting so much stress in one spot
that we can penetrate that through the snowpack a lot deeper
and possibly trigger a weak layer down that, you know, if
you're just moving along one at a time that you wouldn't be able
to affect.
Like if I jump up and down right now, I don't know, maybe I
can create 300 pounds of force something like that.
But if all five of us are jumping up and down, maybe
that's 1500 pounds of force.
That's a lot different.
So that would be the classic is, hey, just as a standard,
you know, operating procedure, if we're going to be an avalanche
train, we're going to spread out a bus length apart on the
up track here.
But I've been in situations where the decision was, you
know what, we can't go forward anymore.
We probably have to dig in for the night.
And that's what's going to make the most sense.
So if you're in that situation, why couldn't you just like,
why couldn't you just ride the skin track out?
Oh, yeah.
If you've already made it that far.
Yeah, that's a great question.
You might be able to, but maybe conditions changed.
Okay.
Yeah, like the storm came in.
So that means like if you're in the middle of something.
Yeah.
It's not like what's in front of you like a shooting crack
went off in front of you.
It's like, uh-oh.
Yeah.
We're surrounded now by high risk.
Yeah.
We had our mental model coming in, but now as the dude would
say, new shit has come to light, man.
And you're like, okay, we need to change our actions.
And it's like, hey, you know, a lot of times when you're in
Europe and they have readily available helicopter rescue,
they're so psyched to have you call before you have an accident.
And they're like, yeah, we'll come and win you out.
It's okay.
We'd much rather win you out when you're healthy than dig you
out after you've been buried.
Yeah. It's a lot easier to move people who are, uh, who are
not injured.
Yeah. Exactly.
Yeah.
But, um, you know, one exception to the rule of spacing out
when you're an avalanche train on the skin track would be
let's say it's rock hard corn snow in the morning.
Uh, and you dug down with your ice axe or your boot heel and
you're like, we keep digging and we're on six inches of frozen
corn.
It's rock solid and there's like half inch or one inch of
thaw. Um, and then by all means you can bunch up, be very
conversational or another exception would be, you know,
you might only be an avalanche train for a very short section
of the skin track and that's the only places you spread out.
Right. Cause when we go touring, we're always like within
conversational distance of each other until it gets to that
30 plus degree.
Yeah.
Terrain.
And then it's super important to have radios so that you're
going to be spread out and it's going to be hard to communicate.
And particularly if I'm not very fit and I'm off the back and
I'm just recovering from the flu and I get a collapse and a
shooting crack and I'm like, Hey, guys, and you can't hear me
because you gapped me off the back.
You know, we need to be able to communicate.
So radios are pretty clutch for that.
So I have another question.
What, you know, a lot of times when we're looking at, you
know, when we'll see a skin track somewhere, it'll be like
in a logging road or something, a lot of times just because of
that bank above where they cut a road, that'll actually be
more than 30 degrees.
Okay.
You know, just that short bank and that could easily slough
down in on you.
Yeah.
But we don't necessarily space out in those scenarios.
Can you explain to me like sort of why the difference in that
is?
Yeah, sure.
Let me paraphrase it back just to make sure I'm hearing it
right.
So if you're on a pretty uniform slope and it's say like high
20s, but it's not avalanche strain, but then we come along
a road cut and there's a slope that's way over 30 degrees
that could avalanche.
You're saying, Hey, what do you think about spacing out there?
Is that accurate?
Yeah, essentially.
I mean, I've just, there've definitely been times where, yeah,
we're on a road cut using it to hike up.
Yeah.
And we know that that, that, that hill that's above us is much
more than 30.
Yeah.
Is it just because we're on that flat cut?
Yeah.
So that it's okay for us.
Like we, we're not worried about remote triggering in that
sense.
There's two things going on.
Let's handle them one at a time.
If it's just a short road cut above me, I need to use some
judgment and expertise and decide, is this a D one or a D
two D one means harmless to humans.
So, you know, the Swissies, for instance, they say look in
the Austrian say look at the slope of 20 by 20 meters.
So it's about 70 by 70 feet.
Personally, for me, that's actually a lot of snow.
And if you think about a roof that's like 70 feet by 70
feet and that slides on you.
Dude, that mess you up.
That mess you up.
Yeah.
It's a little bit big for my taste.
So I think for me, that size is more by 30 by 30 feet, something
like that.
Okay.
And I'm like, Hey, you know, that's a D one.
And if it trigger, if we trigger it from the road and it
comes down on top of us, it's pretty harmless.
Okay.
There are some exceptions.
Like if you're in a gully where there's, there's no place for
the snow to go and it builds up super deep.
That could be a problem.
But I think the more nuanced question you're driving at is
let's say like where we live in Crested Butte Kebler Pass is a
summertime road and there's a lot of road cuts above us that
were bulldozed and they're quite steep, but they're short.
But you're like, whew, I wouldn't want that to fall.
I mean, that's kind of in the 30 to 40, maybe even 50 foot
size slope.
But yeah, where it becomes incredibly hard to trigger that
from the road is when that road is snowmobile and snowcatted
and pounded into concrete.
There's no weak layers there.
Right.
So this is pretty fine nuance.
And you know, if I'm on that main corridor where it gets
pounded by snowmobiles and snowcats every single day of the
year, it's highly unlikely I'm going to disturb a weak layer
that could bring that road cut down on top of me.
But where it gets like unless you went and romped up the
hill, asking for it, like cut it and then then they could all
come down, but if you're on that hard pack room, the weak
layer is gone at that point.
Exactly.
But you know, that might be a case where you may choose to
spread out.
If you're like, hey, you know, there is risk from people
triggering from above other snowmobiles or riders out there.
So let's go ahead and space out here for the unexpected where
it gets really nuanced though is where it gets tricky is a lot
of times hut approaches will be hammered out if you're right
on the skin track and it'll be on a summertime road.
And as long as you stay on that narrow path, maybe three feet
wide, the likelihood of you triggering a weak layer is
really low because it gets so much traffic.
Couple times a week, people are packing that down.
But if you get a little off to the side, you're like, hey,
Dave, I'll catch up to you.
I'm going to pull off the trail and take a leak.
That might be enough to get off the pack down skin track or
the old ski tracks that come out and I could affect that weak
layer and trigger the slope down on top of me and the rest of
the team.
So that's where it's like, whoa, thought about how much
confidence do I have here in that I'm on the skin track or on
the old ski tracks that people ski downhill coming out.
That's cutting it pretty fine.
And I'd rather not take or I'd rather have a larger buffer
for risk, I think.
Gotcha.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
We just covered uphill and we you just taught me something
about the dangers of the off to attract danger P that I never
even thought about.
But now it's time to talk about travel technique on the
downhill.
Sure.
So once we get to the top, we've transitioned into our
downhill mode.
We make sure that our boots are no longer in walk mode than
what?
What's our next move?
All right, cool.
So we want to choose a line that has high high rewards and
low risk optimally.
And when I say low risk, I mean, hey, is this a survivable
run out or are we going to get raked over the cliffs through
the trees into a gully into a gully?
Yeah.
So, you know, again, it comes back to terrain first.
Let's choose a low risk terrain option for the day's conditions.
And then let's add those layers of risk treatment.
So our travel technique, we're going to ideally ski fall line
and then do a 90 degree turn out to the right or the left.
So that if something comes down, we're out of the line of
fire and we want to be riding one at a time when we're
on an avalanche train on the downhill and radios are pretty
clutched to be able to communicate back and forth like
waving poles just doesn't cut it.
Particularly if I'm like, oh my gosh, I just got a massive
collapse down there.
And if I'm trying to like wave that with poles like my old
style Navy ship signaling skills are not that strong.
I think they're probably just going to think, oh, Jeff's
really excited.
It must have been really good riding.
Let's go.
Yeah.
So one at a time and you want to position yourself out of
the line of fire.
So one question that people often have is how far down the
pitch do we go?
And unfortunately, there's very few hard and fast answers.
You could imagine with a very large peak say 3000 vertical
feet.
If you wanted to be fully out of the run out zone, you might
be two hours away if someone gets buried up on the slope
and you'd have to scan all the way back up.
You're so far away.
So you have to kind of split the balance of choosing where to
regroup with our travel techniques.
And ideally for the days avalanche size, you've gone down
far enough that you should be out of the run out and then
you've gone off to the side at 90 degrees.
So you're not under the line of fire.
And it's funny.
People often have a hard time staying disciplined.
We're social creatures and so we'll often instead of staying
you know, farming tracks and then doing that 90 degree
hockey stick at the bottom.
They'll just shoot the hypotenuse and go right at the first
person or the guide and you're like, I don't want you riding
in on top of me.
You're going to avalanche me out.
I am not a target.
Yeah, exactly.
So, you know, often if I'm going to be headed fall line and
then ski to the right to get out of line of fire, I'll say,
Hey, stack your tracks to the left of mine.
Keep them snug and then come over with a hockey stick at the
end.
And that's a great way to manage your group.
Another great tactic.
Wait, can I ask you?
Yeah, sure.
Can I ask you a question about, you know, like if you're
just going to ski a bull, right?
Yep.
A lot of times, especially what you just said, you're going
to ski it in stages like maybe a thousand feet or something
like that.
So how do you choose your sort of hockey stick punch out?
If you're in the middle of a huge bull, like what are we
looking for?
Yeah, that's a great question.
It's very much situationally dependent and it's a really
complex challenge.
So let's try to give you some guidelines to go with here.
The, you know, the first part, of course, is this is a
survivable line.
Like I'm not really into skiing close out lines to be totally
honest.
Like that's maybe one or two days a year when the conditions
have been low danger for a while.
So that'd be first and foremost, but oftentimes you're
looking to avoid potential trigger points like rocky areas
or maybe a steep rollover and gravitating towards a smooth
consistent planar slope.
And when I say planar, just think of like a book tilted on
its side at 35 degrees where I'm unlikely to find further
to find facets near bushes and boulders and I don't have a
big rollover.
It's a smooth uniform slope.
That is optimal.
That's what I'm aiming for.
Those are the lowest risk slopes.
I'm further adding more risk treatments to increase my
margins of safety.
So I'll look for that.
And then if they're saying, Hey, the expected size today are
D one and a half to D two.
So relatively small.
I'll be like, okay, let's factor that into how long of a pitch
we're going to ski and how far to the side do we need to move
out of the way.
And if we can find a lower risk regrouping spot, that's optimal.
And that would be something like a band of old growth trees
that's clearly not been affected by avalanches.
That's usually like a kind of like a little ridge that sticks
up out of the bowl.
So the snow would flow around it.
That can be a great little low risk regroup spot.
There used to be a phrase that made me bristle called islands
of safety.
And, you know, there's plenty of islands in the Pacific that are
not really safe anymore because of global warming and rising
sea level temperature.
You know, like it's, it's, it's got to be really careful about
using the term safe.
It's more like, oh, that's high risk.
That's right in the gut where it's going to get funneled.
Or that's lower risk because that's out of line of fire and
it's raised up.
And for the D one and a half to D two size avalanches they're
talking about today in the bulletin.
It's a pretty reasonable bet.
And I'm trying to balance that with, I could go much farther out
into the bowl, but if somebody in my party gets avalanched, I
can't help them because it'll take me two hours to get back up.
And you always, you know, like, I guess we never really talked
about this, but it always seems like unless we're skiing glades
where there's, there's no chance of being able to see someone,
you usually want your regroup zone to be within visual line of
sight.
That would be optimal of the people at the top.
So you can see the whole line someone's skiing.
Yeah.
But to be fair, sometimes like, let's say you're skiing a narrow
road, the lowest risk place is tucked up under the, the cliffs
wall and I'll be holding onto the rock.
Like not like, you know, a couple of meters away from the rock
wall, if it breaks at the rock wall, I want to be right where it
breaks on it.
Or if slough comes through from the other riders, I want to be
tucked up out of the way.
So travel technique.
When you're skiing really steep pitches or in a cool art is you
have people stack in below the guide.
So come in below me instead of above me.
Cause if you come in above, you're going to slough me out.
So they would ride down fall line and then do the hockey stick
and come under me.
Right.
And then I'd be like, Hey, should we right up against the wall,
hand on the rock.
Yeah.
Should we dispel a myth real quick about, you know, like if one
of the reasons that hockey stick is so important or just that,
you know, getting out of that zone is so important is just
because one person drops in, say the first person goes and
drops, nothing slides.
Second person goes and drops, nothing slides.
But that third person, it could still slide.
Yeah.
There's no guarantee.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I feel like that's something.
Hey, I'm the fourth person to ski this slow.
I'm going to turn my beacon off and save the battery.
Yeah.
I think that's something that you can do when you're dealing with
an old snow problem.
Just because there's tracks on the slope doesn't mean anything.
Doesn't mean anything.
You could see a track or sorry, a slope littered with tracks and
someone hits the landmine, you know, super weak zone near rocks
or shrubs and boom, they kick off the avalanche where it's less
likely to have a problem is if the primary problem is sloughing.
Usually the first person through a clear out most of the slough.
And then to some extent, wind slab and storm slab.
Usually if you're on other people's tracks and you're dealing
with wind slab and storm slab, they're going to clear it out ahead
of you.
It's not a guarantee.
It's just much more likely that the first person would encounter
the problem, kick it off.
And then the people behind them are less likely to.
So what would happen?
Let's just say this.
What happens to our group?
If we ride that first pitch and, you know, we, we get to our,
our low risk regroup zones.
Let's just call it like some old growth trees, like a little island.
Yep.
And then the last person coming down triggers something like they
don't get hit. They get out of the way. They're good.
Then what's our move for that next pitch?
Oh, and they just triggered something.
I mean, hopefully we're in the, in the.
Is that like call of heli?
Like, is that like what you're talking about?
Like, what do we do that? I mean, it's a tough call,
but I've been in a situation before in Chomany where it was a,
a moderate day.
And we had skied steep powder all day, like steep cool ours.
And I was with a couple other.
I FMGA guides and the world free ride leader on a snowboard.
So it's a really strong group.
But when we went up the midi,
there was way more snow than we thought it was super light and it
had been really wind affected.
And so there was, I would say a meter 20 a meter 30 of snow.
And it was incredibly sketchy.
And we were like, whoa, okay,
let's just ski a mellow line down the glacier.
And as we get lower,
should be less wind affected and more reasonable.
Well, we got lower and it actually got worse.
And we were just kicking off avalanches left and right on any
slope, steep enough to slide.
And they were relatively small slopes and we're like, okay,
all right, let's just ski cut close to the roll.
And it would trigger below us.
And then we'd ski the pitch.
But at some point I was like, Hey guys,
this is actually totally different than we thought it's conditions
are getting less stable, not more stable.
It's actually more wind affected the lower we go.
I've never seen this happen before.
It's clearly not moderate danger.
I'd say it's more like high danger.
And we're going to get to a choke point where it's going to get
too steep and we're not going to be able to go any further.
Unless conditions miraculously turned around.
So our options will be called to Helley or dig in for the night.
And so as we got to the rollover where I got to really steep
terrain, I was like, we got to stop here.
And we're stuck.
And so we called the Helley and they said, Hey,
we can't come get you right now.
The conditions have been really surprising today.
And we're responding to a lot of avalanche rescues right now.
You may have to dig in for the night.
And we were like, okay, we've got our space blanket,
baby sacks and extra puffy coats.
It'll suck, but it'll be okay.
And so we were just about to do that.
When my colleague was like, Hey, let me just stomp this at the
whole bowl rip.
It's like a deep.
No way.
Because we could see the hot where we were trying to get to.
But we just couldn't get there.
And so it was so extreme, the wind loading that we were standing
on blown out old moguls.
And so on one ski, he was on a mogul like from earlier in the week
and on the other,
triggered the avalanche, which was about four to five feet deep
because it was so wind loaded.
And the whole thing ripped and we're like, well,
I guess we can ski to the hut now because there was no snow left.
So that I will say was just dumb luck and I wouldn't advise
anyone to try to take that kind of risk.
And then right as we got to the hut, the hell he comes in and
he's like, I thought you said you guys couldn't get to the hut
and we're like, take a look at that slide.
We couldn't, but then we got lucky that we were able to trigger it
with one ski on a mogul and one ski just barely touching the wind
slab.
It was so hypersensitive.
And wow, especially that thick of a slab, man.
That's crazy.
Oh yeah, it was some of the most extreme anomaly conditions I'd
ever seen because we've been skiing steep lines all day around
the valley and there was no wind slab whatsoever.
It was remarkable.
And those unique.
Well, hey, well, I kind of, I mean, this isn't exactly in that
vein, but it sort of trends this direction, which is,
what are some tips for traveling if you're in a place that you
know is pretty highly traveled by many different groups and
different areas, but kind of all in the same zone.
Like what are things we want to look out for?
Like obviously people bring something down on top of you.
Okay.
Like if you see people up above you, you want to make sure that
you're like out of out of there, run out zone.
Oh yeah.
And we want to make sure we don't kick off anything on other
people below us.
And that can be pretty tough when there's competition for
resources and particularly if you're in a crowded area that's
off pieced where you've got lots of people coming off the lift
can be really tough to be like, Hey, I don't want to be responsible
for getting someone below me avalanche.
I'm going to wait because there's more people coming in and they
may not wait for you.
So in that case, it's probably terrain selection.
If it's kind of sketchy out and there's lots of people around.
I don't want to be there.
I don't want to get hit from above and I really don't want to hit
anybody below me.
So we might consciously choose to go somewhere else.
So basically the only, the only hot tip for that one is, is just
choose your terrain wisely.
Yeah.
Try to be out of sync with other people.
Let's, let's wrap this one up with some key takeaways from people.
I've got one more for the downhill.
Oh, great.
Oftentimes if you're skiing in like say, thick old growth forest,
like you said, you may not have real good visual.
So making sure when you're in the forest that you pick your
regroup spots in a similar manner as you would in open bowl,
meaning I'm not going to ski right below you and say, okay, Dave,
I'm good.
Come on down.
I want to ski fall line and then kick out hockey stick to the
side.
And it might be tough for us to see each other.
So radios are key.
The other thing that can be really helpful is when you're an old
growth tree strand, do you want to be on the uphill side of the
tree or the downhill side of the tree?
I think you want to be on the uphill, right?
Cause technically you want to get pinned.
Yeah.
It's better to get pinned than to get flushed.
But ideally what you'd have is a copes of old growth trees above
you that would help deflect any avalanche debris.
If you're not out in line of fire and a couple of really big
trees below you.
So you're pinned and you can get swept away.
So you never want to select the first tree.
If there's a bit of a clearing, you want to be two or three trees
in there to avoid that.
Ideally taking the brunt of a slide.
Ideally.
And when you're in a group, I sometimes have to be a little bit
of a tree Nazi and whack my clients with a pole and be like,
Hey, you need to get right up to that tree on the uphill side and
be like there to hug it.
Because I don't think this avalanche is going to break.
But guess what?
No one ever thought they were going to get avalanched and plenty
of people do get avalanche in the forest.
So we need to be adding our risk treatments.
So we're going to ski one at a time, get out of line of fire with
our hockey stick, be on the uphill side of some very large
old growth trees and hopefully have a bunch of trees above us to
deflect any snow.
And everybody needs to get on board and grab their tree and be
like a big hug a bowl tree so that hug,
are right up against the tree because you wouldn't want your
tails up against the tree because if you get flushed,
you'll just get spun out of there and you're gone.
Right.
You want to be like, here's the tree.
Here's me.
Yeah, I'm right here or in like some branches to hold on to
ideally as well.
Why, you know, I think there's a misconception that skiing in
the trees is safer.
Sure.
And isn't it really, I'm sure you can probably elaborate on this,
but my understanding is that the only reason or the only time
that's true when it means it's more unlikely to slide is when
trees are so thick that you're getting those bombs pretty much
dropping.
Yeah, that's right.
And consistently that it, it bombs out that weak layer,
but if it's thin enough to ski in a fun way with sort of any
velocity, that means that there's not that consistent
breakage of that weak layer.
Right.
Yeah, you're real close.
Let me clear it up.
So when people say, hey, let's ski in the trees, oftentimes that
means a variety of things to people, meaning, hey,
I can't see so well because it's new can snow today.
Like let's have a couple of Christmas trees, Charlie Brown Christmas
trees to mark off a visually that does not help you.
In fact, those are just obstacles to get pushed into and broken up
with.
So we've got a spectrum of a wide open glade.
Not so great to old growth forest where you have to be an expert
rider to ski through.
That's pretty good.
And then super tight trees that are almost that are basically
impassable.
If it's impassable to skiers and snowboarders, it's highly
unlikely that that slope can ever slide.
It's just so broken up by the trees that you can't get a
cohesive slab.
I think of like a birthday cake.
Those are slabs and they stick together.
You got cake icing and then cake layer.
You know, if that slab tries to break off in super tight trees
that are too tight for me to ride through, it just can't really
hold together and fail all together.
And then when you're dealing with an old growth forest that
requires expert riders to ski through, it's wide enough for the
expert to have a lot of fun and open enough.
But like you said, the tree bombs break up those week layers.
And we experienced that last week when it was super sketchy out
and we were able to remotely trigger from the flaps three
avalanches.
But when we were in the old growth forest, no signs of
instability whatsoever, not even on the road cuts that were
like 45 degrees, we thought for sure we'd pop them off.
It was super sketchy.
We were like 500 meters from the zone where it went from
considerable where we were to high danger.
I mean, so it's really touchy out there.
And because of all the tree bombs like you described, we couldn't
see any signs of instability and we toured for probably about
five kilometers through that forest.
The other factors that come into play are the branches
inhibit surface or so we're not going to see the frost hit the
ground hit the snowpack.
It's kind of like if you put a blanket over your windshield,
you know, the frost just can't get to those bottom layers.
And so it doesn't end up in the snowpack.
And then the other thing it prevents is wind slabs from
forming.
You just don't get them in the deep forest.
So that would be my optimal place to ski to maximize skier
enjoyment because we're not skiing when the loaded snow
windslap.
And it's much, much safer often because the weak layers are
broken up by the tree bombs.
But if it's a wide open glade that say an intermediate skier
could ride.
Whoa.
I'm going to think long and hard about that because now that
slope is much more dangerous than a wide open smooth slope
if you get avalanched on a wide open smooth planar slope,
your likelihood of surviving in an avalanche goes up compared to
crashing through a whole bunch of trees.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Rather getting break through a forest.
So there's one more strategy that comes in handy for skiing in
the forest.
And that's the leapfrog.
So I might ski to the rollover so I can see my team above me and
I can see my team all the way below me.
Whereas at the top, once the skier goes over that rollover,
they lose contact with him.
So I'll say, hey, I'm out of the line of fire.
I did my hockey stick, but I can see the top and the bottom of
the run.
I'm going to call my team in one at a time on the radio.
Radio's are pretty key.
I'll be like, okay, Dave, come on in.
You roll in all the way to the bottom and do your hockey stick
at the bottom.
And I'll be the air traffic controller when I see Dave's in
this low risk regroup zone.
I'll send the next runner.
So the main takeaway of this whole thing is radios are key.
Yes.
I can't believe there were decades where I skied without him.
I mean, that was just nuts.
What did you do before?
I mean, we're going to go off on a tangent here, but.
Waving with poles and people be like, what?
And yelling.
I mean, it just doesn't work.
And you know, the thing that changed my mind was I was doing my
French recyclage.
So if you're a French guide, every six years you do your
retraining and they had some consultants who came in and said,
Hey, we work with all kinds of high risk professions.
And that might be emergency medical services, helicopter rescue
teams, military firefighters and you mountain gods are the only
group that we work with that don't have headphones or don't have a
radio to communicate.
Why is that?
And we all.
And I just thought about it was like, uh, cause it's like one more
thing to hassle with and it's kind of heavy and I have to keep
the batteries charged, but I didn't really have a good reason.
And I don't think there is a good reason except.
You know, it's just a little bit annoying and it's one more
piece of kit to faff around with.
Um, but.
You know, it's a small price to pay for the benefits, particularly
if you're trying to coordinate a rescue.
Let's say I'm at the bottom, the teams on the top and the
buried victims in the middle trying to coordinate what we're
going to do. It's almost impossible if we have to scream in
each other.
Yeah, true.
That's so crazy to think about.
I don't think I've ever.
Like I think radios have always been a part of.
My back country experience.
Well, maybe like working with.
Good ones making with film crews.
You have to coordinate and you're just like, we're not going to use
pole waving to try to coordinate a film shoot, let alone an
avalanche.
Yeah, well that's, that's, that is truly ridiculous when you're
like, go.
And then they're like, why?
And you're like ready.
And they're like rolling.
Like go.
And then you're like dropping.
Yeah.
No, I'm not ready.
Go.
You're ready. Like, I mean, can you imagine a bunch of
firefighters or, uh, you know, the, the EMTs that roll up in the
ambulance, not having radio contact or the police?
I mean, that is just.
No, it's like a logistical nightmare.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
What is the new stand for situation normal all fucked up?
That's what it is trying to coordinate a group of five on a
big mountain face without radios.
Yeah.
The situation might be normal, but it is all fucked up.
Yeah.
That sounds tricky.
That sounds V tricky.
Uh, I'm glad we're not doing that anymore.
I like my radio.
Yeah.
I'm glad we're not doing that anymore.
Um, all right, man.
Well, let's, uh, let's, let's wrap this one up before it gets too
long.
All right.
What do you want to, uh, leave?
You want to give people, right?
Here's your actionable advice.
Travel techniques.
Don't trump bad terrain decisions.
And at some point in your career, you may need to call for a chopper
or dig in for the night instead of push through and be really wary.
And then you're like, oh, screw it.
We'll just go one at a time.
It'll be fine.
No, no, no, no, no.
Cause one person avalanche is way too many.
And then anytime we're in avalanche terrain, we want to continue to
add our risk treatments.
So if we're going on the uphill and oh, we're doing kick turns.
Hey, we're in avalanche terrain.
Or ideally just a little bit before you in avalanche train.
We're going to spread out to lessen our impact on the slope.
And then it's only like 300 pounds bouncing up and down instead of say,
1500 pounds.
And we have to be real careful on the switchbacks that we maintain that
school bus distance.
So that our stress bubbles don't overlap.
Um, and then on the downhill, ideally we're riding one at a time in avalanche
train.
And we're using our terrain choices to look for a smooth planer slope.
That's survivable.
And then we do our hockey stick at the bottom.
So we're out of the line of fire, hopefully.
And ideally if we can find a raised ridge or some old growth trees,
um, that's a much lower risk option.
And there's a tension between being far enough out of the run out zone for
the days anticipated avalanche size and being close enough to respond to
your group.
But you kind of have to go with, um, protecting the group members.
Um, I think more emphasis on that because the worst case scenario is
one person gets avalanche, but then five people are regrouped way too
close and get smoked.
Right.
It's always, you would rather have people be a little further away,
but be out of the run out zone so that they can come assist.
Yeah.
We want to have, we want to avoid that multiple burial scenario at all costs.
Um, and then we've got a couple of different techniques when we're in the
trees, we want to be protected above, but also a tree right below us.
That could pin us that we're real close and we're hugging it.
Uh, and it's our bindings are right up against the tree.
So we know we could spun out of there.
Um, leapfrogging can be a lot of fun when you've got to roll over or you're
in the forest with limited visibility.
Um, and that person who's air traffic control goes in the middle of the
slope and ideally off to the side.
So they're out of the line of fire.
Um, and then, uh, it's special cases when you're in really steep terrain,
instead of having the group come in above you, you would have them come in
below you with the hockey stick.
So you don't get sloughed out.
Well, heck yeah, man.
That was like the boom, boom, boom, boom, boom checklist of all of them.
Like right there.
There are plenty of times when we don't ski one at a time when we're out
riding together, but it's, if we're going to party ski,
it's cause we're out of on the street and we're like, let's go for it.
Yeah.
Right.
Below 30.
Yep.
Well, sweet man.
Uh, thank you for, thanks for hopping on this one.
I, uh, you know, even though we mostly ski tour together,
so like, I know a lot of this stuff,
it's still always interesting getting that extra layer of input when we're
not on the skin track.
I feel like I absorb this stuff a lot more than when I'm like cold and
sweaty and running around with camera gear and insert all these other
distractions.
Yeah.
And to be fair, when we're riding great powder,
it's pretty easy to forget this stuff cause it's quite a lot told me that.
That's true.
Yeah.
It's very easy to get excited about the, the Chowda.
Yeah.
Exactly.
All right, man.
Well, uh, great, great talking to you.
And, uh, I think we're wrapped up on this one.
I'll see you next week.
Okay.
I'll see you next week in the back country, Dave.
All right.
Peace out brother.
Bye bye.
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