What's Your System?

Manage Your Human Factor in Avalanche Terrain 

I've never been caught in avalanche. Maybe it's because I'm good at mountain travel. Maybe it's because I maintain a healthy margin for error. Maybe it's luck. In any case, I work hard to avoid avalanches. I'm in the snowy mountains most of the winter. The odds are against me. One of the things I work at is my own system for avoiding avalanches. 

My system is a method for avoiding avalanches that addresses my personal human factors—the seemingly silly mistakes I make in avalanche terrain despite how much I know about avalanches. My system is rigid. I follow it every time I ski, but it evolves year to year as my human factors change. 

Target your own human factors with your system. 

A system is a set of principles or procedures used to achieve a goal—in this case, avalanche avoidance. Avalanche professionals who work in large operations like ski patrol or Canadian heli ski services use a time-tested system that keeps them relatively safe day after day in a high-risk environment. These systems work well in operational settings, but they do not target individual human factors. 

Ski guide and avalanche instructor Sarah Carpenter says, on Wildsnow.com, that recreational skiers should model their daily routine after snow professionals, who often follow these nine steps:

1. Check the avalanche forecast every day.

2. Follow the weather.

3. Track avalanche activity.

4. Plan before you leave the house.

5. Be prepared.

6. Have an opinion.

7. Adjust your plan if conditions are different than you anticipated.

8. Report your observations.

9. Review your tour at the end of the day.

In Avalanche Essentials, Bruce Tremper says that the system for avalanche safety includes: 

1. Have trip plans.

2. Gather information.

3. Know what kind of avalanches you are dealing with.

4. Know what the avalanche pattern is.

5. Choose safe terrain based on those patterns.

6. Know how to travel on the terrain.

7. Know what to do if things go wrong.

Comparing these two lists, we can see some components of an avalanche-avoidance system are essential, such as planning. Through years of practice, most elements of Carpenter and Tremper's systems have become second nature to me. But even if I adhere to these systems, an avalanche could get me through one of my own human factors. Factors not shared by all avalanche professionals. 

To address your human factors, develop a personalized system that incorporates what avalanche researcher Ian McCammon calls your disaster factors—human factors that are most likely to kill you in avalanche terrain. If you know your disaster factors, you can target those issues with your system. Your system builds onto, rather than replaces, generalized systems like Tremper's and Carpenter's. By consistently practicing each step in your system, you will learn to mitigate your human factors, and you can stay alive longer.  

Keith Bobine ski cuts a size 2 on the east face of Mount Mackie, Kootenay Mountains, British Columbia.

As you gain experience, knowledge and maturity, your system will evolve. Tweak it at the beginning of each season. A few years ago, for example, I added "Look for reasons to turn around" to my system as a way to mitigate my goal-obsession on personal trips. After working on that disaster factor, I felt I'd mostly overcome it, and I removed it from my system. Last year I considered my disaster factor of becoming too engrossed in pleasing ski clients. I wanted every client to say, "That was the best day of skiing in my life!" To address this, I reminded myself of the guiding priorities: "number one is safety, number two is achieving the objective and number three is having fun." 

My 2015/16 system for avalanche avoidance focuses on guiding. It ensures that I’ve done as much as possible to keep my clients and myself safe in avalanche terrain. I follow this system every time I guide. Remember, it is an evolving system that targets my human factors that I'm working on now.  

Joe's System for Avalanche Avoidance, January 2016 

1) Communicate with Clients

Lack of communication is a core problem in most avalanche accidents. There are many aspects to good pre-trip communication with clients. These are the aspects I am working on now, until they become habit:

• Send pre-trip letter to client.

• Discuss objective and options with client.

• Discuss risks with client.

• View and discuss weather with client.

• View and discuss avalanche advisory with client.

2) Attend Guide Meetings 

The morning guide meeting is an important step to processing information before going into the field. Since I mostly work by myself, the guide meeting is often just me, at 5:30 am at home or in the sleeping bag. I review the weather, snow and avalanche conditions, the group and the plan. When possible, I join Chugach Powder Guides in Girdwood for their morning meeting. 

3) Practice Avalanche Companion Rescue with Clients 

Before going near avalanche terrain, I practice companion rescue with every client. I do the same for glacier skiing. Before moving on glaciers, I practice building snow anchors for crevasse rescue with each client. 

Morning meeting at Big Red Cats, Rossland, British Columbia.

4) Apply Terrain Progression

Alaska ski guide Brad Cosgrove first explained terrain progression to me. Brad said to start every day, and every trip, mellow. This is akin to skiing at a resort where you warm up with some groomers, hit your most challenging run toward the end of the day, and then warm down for the last run. While backcountry skiing, I apply terrain progression by starting on easier terrain and ramping it up if conditions and the group allow. Before every trip, I explain terrain progression to clients so they understand how it works. 

5) Use Strategic Mindset Terms with Clients

In Roger Atkins 2014 ISSW paper Yin, Yang and You he describes seven mindsets for integrating human factors into decision-making. For example, when a big storm clears and while collecting information, you'll be in assessment mindset. After a few days of stepping out mindset with no signs of snow instability, you may enter open season mindset and go for it. I use this terminology with clients so they better understand our status relative to avalanche danger.  

6) Pause Before Skiing 

I pause and think before diving into each run. Standing there on the ridge, I create what McCammon calls a pre-mortem. I ask myself, "If this slope avalanches, what clues would I have missed?" I pick out the dumb mistakes from my imagined obituary and try to correct those mistakes before they happen. Southcentral Alaskans can ask themselves: "What would Medred say?"

Contemplating Center Chute on Mount Roberts, Kootenay Mountains, British Columbia.

7) Ski Test Every Run

I ski test every run, to keep it a habit. Ski testing is similar to ski cutting done by ski patrollers, but different. You're not trying to start an avalanche. Rather you're starting the run defensively with a couple zig-zags, aiming toward your escape route just in case the slope does release. As Larry Goldie explains in Off Piste, a ski test is "one last test before we fully commit to the slope.... a tool … used to further minimize the risk while skiing." 

What are your human factors? What is your system to address those human factors? Write it down on your coffee cup. Stick to it. And let it evolve. 

More Reading

• Morning Meeting, The Importance of a Clear Plan and Conditions Dialogue, by Larry Goldie, Off Piste, October 2015.

• Avalanche Essentials, by Bruce Tremper, Mountaineers Books.

• The Daily Rituals of Avalanche Professionals, by Sarah Carpenter.

• Yin, Yang and You, by Roger Atkins. Proceedings of the 2014 ISSW, pages 210-217.

• A Question of Risk, by Drew Hardesty, blackdiamondequipment.com.

• Decision Making in the Wild, NOLS, by Ian McCammon, May 18, 2015.

• The Biggest Secret Your Avalanche Instructor Never Mentioned: The Ski Cut, by Larry Goldie, Off Piste, December 2013, pages 20-21.

• Mountain Skills: Be Ready with Team and Routine, by Brennan LaGasse, Backcountry, January 2016.

Turning Around

Turning Around

The Importance of Failure in the Mountains

Last spring a buddy and I rappelled into a chute in the Chugach Mountains. We tossed our skinny ropes from the second rap station. They tangled and caught in the rocks. We pulled, but they wouldn't budge. The sheath of one tore on a sharp edge. We cut the remaining rope free and climbed back to the ridge. I hoped nobody would find our abandoned rope and learn about the debacle.  

 * * *

Mountain objectives can be elusive. The size of the objective doesn't matter; it could be a 3,000-foot wall of rock and ice or a low-angle powder ski run. If the objective challenges the mountain traveler, then there is potential for not achieving the objective. In some cases the mountain or weather could simply defeat us. Other times we use poor judgment and make seemingly dumb decisions. In the best case, this means turning around. In the worst case a fatality. Regardless, the objective wasn't achieved and the trip can be considered a failure. 

The dictionary defines failure as lack of success. The word failure packs a negative punch: failure is perceived as bad. To avoid the stigma, other terms are common in the mountain idiom: to bail, turn around, retreat, to be defeated or to make an attempt.

Mountain failures can be attributed to either external or internal factors or a combination of both. External factors are from the environment, such as avalanche, rockfall or weather. Internal factors are from our own limitations such as fear, or lack of experience or strength. 

While failure is initially frustrating to mountain travelers, with experience they learn to accept it as an integral and important part of being in the mountains. 

Joe accepting failure in the Tordrillo Mountains. Photo by Andrew Wexler.

Why is Failure Difficult?

Humans are hard-wired to succeed. Plus, social norms reward success and punish failure. We crave that pat on the back and the sense of completion that comes from success. The problem with striving for success in the mountains is that it's often all-or-nothing. Return from an expedition and people ask, "Did you get to the summit?" Reach the summit and you’ve succeeded, don’t reach the summit and you’ve failed—and failure doesn’t feel good. 

Another difficulty with failure is that it takes self-control—to resist the powder slope that you're 99.9 percent sure is stable, to back off the frozen waterfall when the bowl above moves into direct sun. The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment highlighted the importance of self-control. Scientists placed kids in a room with a marshmallow. If they didn't eat the marshmallow within 15 minutes they could have two marshmallows. In a follow-up study years later, kids who waited 15 minutes had better life outcomes. This is called delayed gratification: exchanging a small reward now for a bigger reward later. In the mountains, the big reward is a long life. Most long-time mountain travelers have learned that the real objective is to come back alive, with all of their fingers and toes. 

Turning around is not easy. Most agree that turning around is more difficult than continuing. Some say it's the hardest act in the mountains. Extreme skier Andreas Fransson said he was most proud of the runs he didn't take because backing off is harder than dropping in. 

We bailed back to the lodge after four hours in a 32-degree downpour. Brad Cosgrove finds justification in his Good Earth tea: "Failure is success if we learn from it." –Malcolm S. Forbes.

Why Failure is Important

At the most fundamental level, turning around is how we avoid accidents. Failure is also how we learn, find adventure and gain trust. 

Success feels good, but it teaches us little. Alpinist Marc Twight calls it "the tyranny of success." When you succeed at something challenging, it is difficult to know why you succeeded. Was it luck or are you just really good? Steve House writes, in Beyond the Mountain, "Success, when achieved, is deceptive—for there lies praise, closure and achievement. Failure is the more valuable fruit, borne as it is from the knurled vine of process."

It is through failure, and its inevitable analysis, that we learn the most and get better at our craft. Twight calls failure “The Schoolroom.” As an Anchorage professor reminded me, "You can be told an important concept ten times, but nothing teaches you faster than screwing it up." For example, the quickest way to learn about avalanches—although not recommended—is to almost get killed by one. 

Failure is also fundamental to adventure and the allure of the mountains. Adventure requires an unknown outcome, and the possibility of failure. If you always achieve your mountain objective, then you aren’t challenging yourself. It is okay to simply enjoy the mountains while working toward objectives within your ability, but true adventure and challenge come with a high chance of failure. 

Ultimately, adventure requires an upper limit, which is the impossible. A classic story of adventure and failure occurred on Cerro Torre in Patagonia, a rock tower that legendary french alpinist Lionel Terray described as “an impossible mountain." In 1970 Cesare Maestri drilled a line of 400 bolts up its granite wall, creating an easier route to the summit. Soon after, Reinhold Messner wrote a seminal article, entitled "The Murder of the Impossible," targeting acts such as Maestri's. In 2012, young climbers chopped 120 of Maestri's bolts, an act for "restoration of the impossible." 

Great successes ride on the back of failures. Adrian Nature's 1998 solo ski descent of Denali's Wickersham Wall—perhaps the most significant ski descent in US history—took several years of attempts. The household oil WD-40 was developed on the 40th try. Thomas Edison's light bulb on the 10,000th try. Likewise, having an article rejected or severely criticized during the review process leads to a better published article, if the author is persistent and willing to learn from mistakes.

A final reason we need to be able to accept failure in the mountains is to build trust. You learn to trust yourself, knowing that "If it gets bad, I can turn around." Also, your history of turning around lets friends and family rest easy knowing you will turn back if it gets bad.

Eric Parsons and Jeff Conaway turning around in the Talkeetna Mountains after a whoomph.

How to Turn Around

Fundamental to turning around is discussing options with your group while trip planning. "Let's give the North Chute a try. If that doesn't work we'll ski the trees." Without options you’ll blunder single-mindedly into true failure—an accident.

For mountain travelers, the desire to achieve single-minded goals can kill us. If turning around is so difficult, why not include it as one of the trip options? Look for reasons to turn around. If you can’t find any, continue on. But listen to your gut instinct if things feel weird. Correct the error before it becomes an accident. Have lower expectations, then be surprised by a success. As the Kiwis say as they leave the hut for a wall of rock and ice in the Southern Alps, "Just going for a look." 

A third tactic to make turning around easier is to focus on the experience rather than the end point. Practice mindfulness: look around and try to live in the moment. Have objectives, strive for objectives, and yet commit to the process. By engaging in the process you’ll enjoy the trip more and your heightened awareness of the present will increase your safety.

Be proud of turning around. Get comfortable saying, "The mountain will be there next time." It shows you are humble but have confidence in your skills. If you turn around, you will instinctively analyze what happened. Debriefing with yourself and your partners is a necessary part of the learning process. 

Joe in the Chugach Mountains. Photo by John Sykes.

* * *

I wondered what happened that day when I cut the rope and turned around in the Chugach Mountains. I have been rappelling for 30 years. It seems like it shouldn't be an issue. But after a week of thinking, I narrowed my problem down to several mistakes, principles I'd learned in the past and needed to relearn. The first was that skinny ropes cut easily—use them with care around sharp rock. Second, tossing rap ropes often doesn't work in the alpine—carry them down as saddlebags. Third, apply the steep skiers' rule of climbing the line before skiing it. A week later, I returned and completed the project. I learned more from that descent than from any other. 

2016 Update

Over the past couple years I've continued to learn the importance of turning around. If turning around is practiced, such as in avalanche classes, pathways are built in the brain that make it easier to turn around when it is really needed. Without practice, your brain won't consider turning as an option.

2017 Update

The bias called Loss Aversion—people's tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains— helps explain our difficulty with turning around. Studies have found that losses are twice as powerful psychologically as gains. For example, it's better to not lose five dollars than to find five dollars. Or, it feels better to not turn around, than to improve your chances of not being caught in an avalanche. 

“You want to know the difference between a master and a beginner? The master has failed more times than the beginner has ever tried. ”

— Yoda

More Reading 

• Beyond the Mountain, by Steve House.

• Editor's Note: Restoration of the Impossible, Alpinist.com, June 2007.

• Extreme Alpinism: Climbing Light, Fast & High, by Mark Twight.

• Hayden Kennedy: Alpine Taliban or Patagonian Custodian? Part 2, The Enormocast, Episode 7.

• Guide's Corner, The Importance of Failure, by Joe Stock, Off Piste, March 2015, pages 18-19.

• The Murder of the Impossible, by Reinhold Messner, Mountain #15, 1971.

• The Rock Warrior's Way, by Arno Ilgner.

• The Tortoise & the Hype, by Carlin Flora, Psychology Today, August 2015.

• Training for the New Alpinism: A Manual For the Climber as Athlete, by Steve House and Scott Johnston.