Joe's Avalanche Obsession

A couple years ago, a trip with five Québécois finally came together. On the first day we did a thorough trip plan and a trailhead check, we practiced avalanche rescue, and we started touring up from Turnagain Pass. The avalanche danger was at moderate for a persistent slab that was buried ten days earlier. The weak layer had shown no propagation or avalanches in over a week. But like the forecasters, I still did not trust the snowpack. As we toured, we dug a quick pit at 2,000 feet and another at 3,500 feet, but found no propagation. I couldn’t even find a weak layer. We continued climbing to the ridge, spreading out and spotting each other up the last steeper section.

Booting the last 100 feet to the ridge.

From the ridge I skied the slope first, making several ski cuts across the top short section of avalanche terrain before skiing a long, low angle powder run to beyond the runout. The next four skied, all experiencing the Alaska run of their dreams. The last person dropped into the slope and it avalanched, releasing about two feet deep and 200 feet across. He rode it 600 feet down, staying on the surface, and came to a gentle stop near us.

The 25-degree slope where most of the slab released.

A client of mine was avalanched. That’s a rough dose for a backcountry ski guide. We talked and debriefed about the avalanche at length. To the clients it appeared I did everything right. We skied together another nine days. It was easy to enjoy monster days of mellow powder skiing after the avalanche.

Of course I kept thinking about the avalanche. I’ve been studying avalanches my whole life, and now this happens. I came up with seven reminders of what I could have done better. 

1. Take time with clients to include a thorough briefing, trailhead checks, rescue practice, and pits.

2. Be meticulous in pits. 

3. Surface hoar may not be visible on pit walls.

4. Surface hoar avalanches move fast and on low angle slopes.

5. Ask if am I pushing it for me, or for the clients? Both should be low priority.

6. Always ski cut toward an escape zone.

7. Good runouts are the difference between a ride and death.

But the main thing I thought was, “Wow! This is why I love avalanches!” Nobody was hurt, and now I get to learn a bunch.

I first heard about avalanches as a little kid when my dad took me backcountry skiing in the Wallowa Mountains in Oregon. He had a bunch of graduate students that were into backcountry skiing. As we toured into the Wallowas, I asked Dad what I was carrying in my pack and he said, “Your moon boots.” We made tele turns, that were mostly face plants, with long wooden skis and three pins. It took me 18 years to fix the heel and fix that problem. We practiced with Ramer avalanche beacons and ear pieces. One of Dad’s students gave an evening lecture on avalanche safety. Later in the trip, up through the trees, I heard an avalanche rumble down the mountain. I was hooked. 

Joe and Dave Stock in the Wallowas, Oregon.

I did my first avalanche project in sixth grade. I made a poster copied from a second edition of The Freedom of the Hills that showed a wise route going up through thick forest, and “NEVER!” written across the nice open ski terrain. I did every project in college and graduate school on avalanches. I was so lucky to have mentors like Karl Birkeland and Denny Hogan. Last spring I caught up with Denny at his home in Colorado. Denny has worked every job possible with avalanches. Denny showed me humility. He said you can’t be an avalanche expert because they are too complex. He also told me his wife always had his gravestone planned out. It would’ve read, “Should have known better.”

Denny Hogan at Independence Pass near his home in Buena Vista, Colorado.

My relationship with avalanches has gone up and down over the years. I grew up with parents who were science professors, so naturally I gravitated toward snow and avalanche research. I spent years head down bum up in snowpits. Then I didn’t dig a pit for ten years.

Working as a mountain guide I’ve felt like the doors have been wide open. I was taught the mountain guiding techniques, and then the constant message was, “Go for it. Guide anything you want.”

In the avalanche world, like in mountain guiding, I’ve also had many opportunities. I’ve also been told No many times. No, you’re wrong. No, you can’t do that. No, you can’t say that. I’ve often wondered why this is. Maybe it’s because avalanches are not well understood and often not tangible. You often can’t put your hands on this unseeable danger that lingers under powder. The lack of tangible evidence brings about a different ethos. It’s like some people feel they truly understand snow, and how it should be treated, and therefore they know the rules, and that Joe should be following those rules. 

Mountain guiding is much different. The mountain guiding problems are well-understood and tangible. For example, consider the Grand Couloir on the easiest route up Mont Blanc. Some guides won’t guide this route because of the rockfall. Other guides are up there every three days. There’s differences in opinion, but that’s okay because it’s an obvious danger. Everyone is allowed to think about it how they like. 

Looking down the Grand Couloir from the old Gouter Refuge on Mont Blanc. 2,000 feet of loose and falling rocks.

But maybe the real reason I’ve been told no many times in the avalanche world is because I’m a rogue. I think differently. I’ve never had a television. My childhood past time was digging holes in the Eastern Washington dirt. I’m bewildered by social media. Some people wonder if I grew up in a cave. 

Molly gardening in the rocks in El Chalten, Patagonia. One winter, Cathy and I met my Mom and Dad in El Chalten. Mom realized it was her place. She loves the mountains, the volatile weather, the gauchos, and the climbers. She’s been spending winters down there now for 15 years.

I definitely got the rogue gene from my mom. She’s a hyper passionate and obsessive person and fed those traits to me. She taught me that being passionate and obsessed are essential for living a full life. To her my obsessions were normal. Another parent would have had me heavily medicated. 

Now I’m so grateful to be a rogue. I realize that great things get done by the rogues I look up to. J Harlen Bretz didn’t discover the great floods of the Inland Northwest where I grew up by committee. Darwin didn’t get consensus before publishing The Origin of Species. Alfred Wegener proposed plate tectonics because he didn’t follow the rules, and was a rogue. I now realize that being a rogue means the avalanche world is wide open. Just like the mountain guiding world. Anything is possible. I can still make conservative avalanche decisions, but my avalanche thinking is going further out there as I strive to get closer to the truth. 

J Harlen Brentz who realized the Scablands of Eastern Washington, near where I grew up, originated from ice age floods. He spent years studying this landscape and 40 years defending his theory until it was finally accepted. He wrote, "Ideas without precedent are generally looked upon with disfavor and men are shocked if their conceptions of an orderly world are challenged."

Now I love improving my avalanche knowledge through teaching and ski guiding. Teaching avalanche courses with Nick and Elliot and fine-turning our Alaska Guide Collective curriculum has been a blast. I love the challenge of teaching students how to deal with this intangible problem. How do I teach students to make smart, data-driven decisions, when mine are mostly made through intuition? 

By comparison, teaching rock, ice and mountain climbing are a no brainer. Thwack your tools like this and don’t fall off. Climb the crack like so. Backup your rappel these 10 ways.

I also love using avalanche knowledge when ski guiding in remote Alaska. I’m not out there managing risk. I’m managing avalanche uncertainty. That’s about the coolest thing in the world. I love the cerebral game of making avalanche decisions, with a bunch of clients waiting for me to voice my intuition. Sometimes I feel like yelling out “Wait! Don’t trust me! There is too much uncertainty to trust me!”

At the top of our first run of the trip in the Alaska Range last spring. We remote triggered this slope as we skinned up to our first run. That reduces uncertainty, but now where do we ski?

My latest avalanche obsession was writing a book about avoiding them. I wanted to know more. I wanted to take my avalanche knowledge to the next level. I’ve wanted to write an avalanche safety book for years, and I finally felt ready. 

I started writing The Avalanche Factor in 2019. It took a full year to get it all down. Then a year of revising. Then two more years of collecting edits from anyone that would read it. Turns out it’s the world’s most confusing topic. How do you make a logical progression without red flags being a non-sequitur? What do you say about snow temperature? And how about the human factor? I do know that my human factor is pegged at red most of the time, so who am I to say? I learned that the more you know about human factor the better you are at justifying your stupid decisions. I also learned that the trick to reducing the human factor, and making better decisions, comes down to the tools you use to reduce it. Tools like slowing down, cultivating good partners, and using a system.

To get The Avalanche Factor done in four years meant any day I wasn’t up to guide at 5am, I be up to write. It was so much fun. That’s the thing about being obsessed and passionate. It’s really fun. It makes for a great life and I feel so lucky. It’s nice to have the first edition of the Avalanche Factor finished, but I miss the process. It’s like pulling off a big mountain trip. It feels great to have it done, but the anticipation of the trip, and the trip itself, are what the obsessed live for.

After writing The Avalanche Factor I do feel like I’ve taken my knowledge to the next level. I’m not an avalanche expert, because, like Denny told me, that’s not possible. But I do know way more. And I’m dying to keep learning. So please, let me know what you think about the book. I love getting critical feedback. And it will all be fed into the next edition.

Also while writing The Avalanche Factor I realized that avalanche education is a vast and wild frontier. We know that avalanche education is working, because the annual death rate has flat-lined, but there’s a better way. It needs a macro-dose of Psilocybin. A new way of teaching avalanche avoidance is waiting for us. Seeking that better way to avoid avalanches will keep me obsessed for a couple more decades. That and my wife Cathy. 

My avalanche obsession is one reason why backcountry skiing doesn’t get boring.

Avoiding Avalanches in Remote Alaska

Skiing far from the road, in areas without a professional avalanche forecast, is the essence of backcountry skiing in Alaska. In these remote areas, uncertainty is high and the adventure dial is on max. Compared to the relative safety of roadside skiing, more technical knowledge, more experience, and a different mindset are needed.

I’ve been skiing in remote Alaska for thirty years and trying my best to avoid avalanches the entire time. So far I’ve been lucky, but it’s not wise to depend on luck for safety. To avoid avalanches, my goal is to ditch the luck part and rely more on knowledge, experience, and a better understanding of uncertainty to manage avalanche risk. This is a work in progress. I’m perpetually questioning and rethinking the avalanche problem. So please get in touch and share your ideas if this article resonates. I’d love to hear from you.

In this article I present a process for avoiding avalanches in remote Alaska. It’s a series of steps to go through on each trip. The process starts with training in the years before your trip, and planning in the weeks before the trip. Once in the field, it’s an ongoing cycle of observing conditions, forecasting avalanches, building route options, and adding margins for safety. A mindset of embracing uncertainty ties this backcountry cycle together in the field.

The Forecast

At roadside backcountry ski regions of Alaska, like Turnagain or Hatcher Pass, the professional avalanche forecast is a baseline of information before going into avalanche terrain. A team of highly skilled avalanche professionals build the forecast, like at the Chugach National Forest Avalanche Information Center or Hatcher Pass Avalanche Center. Their job is to assess avalanche conditions, consolidate observations from the community, and to present the information to the public in usable form. In regions without a professional avalanche forecast, you become the forecaster. You must do all the work of a forecasting team. Skiing in regions without a professional forecast is a different mindset and way of operating.

Training

The first part of skiing in remote Alaska is training. Skiing in remote Alaska requires a lot of training. Of course you need good fitness and riding ability to move around. Gain backcountry skills through a progression of backcountry trips, so going into remote Alaska isn’t a big jump. You also need avalanche skills. The Recreational Level 2 avalanche course is geared toward being your own forecaster. It is said that without a Rec 2 you’re like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.

Nick D’Alessio teaching Rec 2 avalanche students how to assess a weak layer in a pit. Rec 2 snowpits are more for forecasting whereas Rec 1 snowpits are more about learning.

With the training you also need experience and practice. Experience adds data to your mental database allowing you to make better decisions by recognizing situations. Deliberate practice is where the learning really happens though. Deliberate practice is painful, type two fun. An example of deliberate practice is turning around before the summit because of avalanche conditions, or digging a two-meter hole in hard snow for rescue practice, or taking an avalanche course rather than going skiing. It isn’t exactly fun at the moment, but it’s how we learn best.

The second part of skiing in remote Alaska is planing your trip. This starts in the months and weeks before the trip. There is a surprising amount of information about weather and snow conditions in remote Alaska including remote weather stations, aviation cameras, trip reports, etc. Alaska adventurer Luc Mehl has a great weather resources page on his website (thingstolucat.com/ddtp-weather-resources). Pilots are another great resource as they know current conditions in remote Alaska better than anyone. I often won’t decide exactly where to go until we’re leaning up against a loaded plane and I’m drilling the pilot for information.

Remote Alaska Conditions

• NRCS Mountain Snowpack Maps: wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/cgibin/ak_snow.pl?state=alaska

• Bush Pilots: They know remote conditions the best, even if they don’t ski or climb.

• NWS Alaska Snow Data: weather.gov/aprfc/Snow_Depth

• FAA Aviation Weather Cameras: weathercams.faa.gov

• AOOS Real Time Sensors: data.aoos.org/maps/sensors/#

Part of planning is forecasting the avalanche danger and problems you may encounter. Make a guess based on the information you found. Was there a big recent storm that may have dumped five feet on top of a persistent weak layer? Was it a drier than normal season? Spring is the ideal time to ski in remote Alaska because the days are long, snowpack is deep, temps are warmer, and there are less persistent avalanche problems.

Before the trip, be armed with several entirely different trips options. Alaska adventurers know that staying flexible with trip options is fundamental to trip success in Alaska. For example, your first choice may be the central Chugach, but if it’s a raging storm there be ready to shift to the central Talkeetna Mountains. Fixating on one trip option is setting yourself up for disappointment. Select places that have a range of terrain options. From simple terrain for elevated avalanche danger, to complex terrain for low danger.

Even as you head into the backcountry, things will not go as planned. My favorite is when flying into a remote area that we’ve been planning on for months and the pilot says, “Sorry, we can’t land there.” That means I get to window shop for a new place. The adventure level just went up another notch. Embracing adventure, the unknown, and uncertainty is what feeds the Alaska adventure addict. If you want things to go as planned, ski somewhere besides Alaska.

In the Backcountry

After training and planning, it’s time to move into remote Alaska by air, boat, snow machine, or good old human muscle. To avoid avalanches while in the backcountry, use an ongoing cycle of observing conditions, forecasting avalanches, building route options, and adding margins for safety. These steps build upon the planning you did before the trip: it’s a continuum of studying conditions and routes.

Jeff Conaway driving his personal adventure machine into the backcountry. He’s looking at the snow cover, checking for recent avalanches and wind loading.

Embracing uncertainty is the common theme that ties this backcountry cycle together. In the snowy mountains we don’t know exactly what going in the snowpack. In remote Alaska, without a professional forecasts, we know the least. Like life in general, we rarely have a clear choice when making a decision, unless we only use data that supports our bias. Eliminating bias is impossible, even says the world authority Daniel Kahneman, so we need to adapt ways to work with bias to minimize its negative effects.

One useful technique to embrace uncertainty in remote Alaska is to say “I’m not sure.” Often. This statement from poker champion Annie Duke1 acknowledges uncertainty and promotes open discussion in the group.

Another useful technique for embracing uncertainty is Roger Atkins’ strategic mindset for avalanche decision making under uncertainty. Begin your trip in remote Alaska with a strategic mindset of Assessment where “There is a high degree of uncertainty about conditions, such as when…entering new terrain….” The operating strategy is to “Select conservative terrain in which to operate confidently while more information is gathered to gain confidence in the hazard assessment.” This means maintaining big margins for safety and making a lot of observations.

Assessment strategic mindset with typical conditions and operating strategy. From Yin, Yang, and You. Roger Atkins. ISSW 2014.

Observe Conditions

Observing conditions is the first part of the backcountry cycle. As soon as you get into the mountains you can get your hands on the conditions you forecasted during trip planning. This is called ground truthing. Look for red flags for unstable snow. Test the snowpack with slope tests, feel underfoot, extended column tests, etc. An Observation Worksheet helps learn this process.

The probe is especially useful for learning about the new snowpack in a remote area. Get out your probe as soon as you get there. Feel for snowpack depth and layering. Is there a strong slab over a weak layer? Keep your probe out as you make your first track, probing the layers along the way.

Florian Wade measuring snow depth in the Alaska Range last spring. This trip was to the normally crowded Pika Glacier, but this year it was dead: no air traffic, no planes, no other skiers, just us.

One of the biggest differences about remote Alaska is I don’t have professional avalanche forecasters like Wendy Wagner and Aleph Johnston-Bloom digging a bunch of pits for me. I have to dig the pits myself. In pits, as with the probe, focuss on searching for a deep slab avalanche problem. These are the big and deadly avalanches that are hard to identify without an avalanche forecast. Nobody wants to get surprised by a deep slab.

Forecast Avalanches

The second part of the backcountry cycle is to forecast avalanche danger and problems based on the observations you made. This process is laid out in the pithy paper entitled Conceptual Model of Avalanche Hazard.

The structure of an avalanche problem is defined by its type, location, likelihood and size. From the Conceptual Model of Avalanche Hazard.

One way to distill the Conceptual Model into a usable format, and to learn the process, is with a Forecasting Worksheet. This helps describe the components of each avalanche problem that are present, come up with an overall avalanche danger, and determine what observations will most reduce the uncertainty.

A useful forecasting tool for remote locations is the Dangerator developed by the Canadians. The Dangerator says your starting point when arriving in the remote backcountry is considerable. Considerable means “human-triggered avalanches are likely.” That’s the real deal. Avoid avalanche terrain when you first arrive until you make observations that may reduce uncertainty.

Another problem with a considerable danger rating is this is where uncertainty about triggering an avalanche is often highest. At moderate and considerable you often don’t really know what’s going on in the snowpack and decisions are difficult. On the other hand, decisions are easy at low danger where it probably won’t avalanche. Decisions are also easy at high and extreme where it probably will avalanche.

Uncertainty compared to avalanche danger. Graphic by Joe Stock and Kirsten Cohen with help from Keith Robine and Karl Birkeland.

Build Route Options

The third part of the backcountry cycle, after making observations and forecasting avalanches, is to build route options. Notch back all of your route options during the entire trip to account for uncertainty and lack of rescue resources. Start on simple, non-avalanche terrain for the first day or two as you make observations and assess conditions. As observations reduce uncertainty, you might step out into more aggressive terrain, or your route options may stay mellow and simple the entire trip.

In this photo we have a variety of route options, from this low angle powder slope to steep and committing lines if our danger rating and uncertainty go down.

Add Margins For Safety

The final part of the backcountry cycle is to add margins for safety. These margins are travel techniques to help asure we don’t get caught in an avalanche, and to increase our odds of survival if we do get caught. In remote Alaska these margins need to be bigger than normal to account for high uncertainty and the lack of rescue resources. Rescue won’t be coming any time soon.

We planned our entire trip around getting this glory chute. Halfway up the snow began feeling slabby. In doubt, we turned around. Turning around is my favorite margin for safety. I use it all the time. Everyone in the group knew that we were ready to turn around if things felt at all weird. The chute is still waiting patiently for us to come back for another crack.

The margins of safety we use in everyday backcountry skiing are important such as spreading out, stopping in a safe zone, and spotting our partner. In remote Alaska, other margins also become more important such as starting on small terrain, turning around if in doubt, ski testing before committing to a slope, and slowing down. Habitually using fat margins of safety will save your ass more times that you will every know.

There’s a Time and a Place

Getting into big complex terrain in remote Alaska requires a unique combination of conditions and people. You need to have found low danger after searching everywhere. And your group needs to be in agreement and feeling good about the conditions. Don’t expect this perfect combination on your first trip. You’re on nature’s schedule.

Mike Schmid on the run of dreams. We’d been on numerous trips to remote Alaska to nail this perfect combination of avalanche conditions and group. Every trip had been a wild and memorable adventure into the unknown.

I figure I nail conditions on one out of every five trips. The trick is to enjoy every trip. Those that go on many trips into remote Alaska enjoy the process more than the goal. Learn to enjoy terrain that is low angle and has low consequences. Enjoy camping and the simple life. One trip we flew into remote Alaska and dug for nine days straight, trying to stay afloat in a colossal snowstorm. It took us back to our simple roots of survival: dig, eat, sleep, read, talk, repeat. Boredom is precious these days.

It may seem like I’ve turned backcountry skiing into a laboratory research experiment. You can ignore all of this and just go skiing, and you’ll probably be okay, but it is more sustainable if you have a method to the madness. Avoiding avalanches in remote Alaska is simply learning how to think like nature. We have these skills engrained in our DNA from five billion years of programming. The trick is to slow down and apply those engrained skills to think like the mountains.

More Reading

1 Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts, Annie Duke, 2018.

2 Yin, Yang, and You. Roger Atkins. ISSW 2014.

3 A Conceptual Model of Avalanche Hazard, Statham and Others, Natural Hazards, 2017.

Thank You

Aleph Johnston-Bloom, Cathy Flanagan, Karl Birkeland, Keith Robine, Molly Stock, and Wendy Wagner.