From: allen%asylum.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Allen Sanderson)
Newsgroups: rec.skiing
Subject: Re: Avalanche death in Utah
Date: 15 Apr 92 17:30:43 GMT
Article-I.D.: hellgate.1992Apr15.113044.396
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept

lowell@tc.fluke.COM (Lowell Skoog) writes:
>In a previous posting, Walt Haas describes the Gold Basin avalanche.
>
>What strikes me about this account is how finely the party balanced
>ambiguous signals to make their hazard evaluation.  Below tree line
>they heard woomph sounds, but above tree line they didn't.  Natural
>slides were observed starting on steep slopes, but stopping on more
>moderate slopes.

During the presentation on the acciedents the Forcast Center gave an
little talk about judging the overall situation.  They use the
following giving each one a rating of red, yellow, and green.

Weather:	 Green - bright summy day
Snow Pack:	 Red   - Several feet of TG snow, 9" of new well bonded on top 
Terrian:	 Red   - Open slope, rocky, ~30 degree, ~40+ degrees above.
Group Dynamics:  Yellow - All good friends out for a day of skiing.

One thing that happens in any group is peer pressure.  How many of us
have been in a group when someone has been hesitant about skiing a
slope ?  We convience them to ski it - sometimes they have a blast
othertimes they are ready to kill us afterwards.

>I don't mean to second guess them, since they undoubtably knew more
>about Utah conditions than I do.  But here is food for thought:
>
>It seems to me that they used their avalanche expertise to ride a
>finer line of danger.  On the spectrum from obviously safe to
>obviously unsafe conditions, they used their knowledge to tread
>closer to the threshold between the two.  I think this may be
>common.  We use our training to evaluate conditions on marginal days,
>days on which we might stay home if we lacked confidence in our
>knowledge.
>
>Desire draws us like moths to a flame.  The smart moth, who
>understands the flame but gets as close to it as he dares, may not 
>be much safer than the ignorant moth who blunders into it.

Lowell is very right in his observation.  For those who do not often ski
out of bounds a parallel can be drawn between equipment and knowledge.
With new equipment you might be tempted to ski a more difficult run
than you have previously due the added confidence of the new
equipment.  With more knowledge you might ski a more dangeruous
(unstable) slope.  A friend an I had the samething happen two weeks
ago on the Grand Teton.  We decided to do a rock climbing route 
low down on the mountian (Direct Exum) after finishing it we decided
to finish the ridge to the summit.  We figured we could make the
necessary rappels down before it got dark.  I had done the decent
three time previously and felt that I could find it in the light
again.  Unfortunately as we started to decend from the summit, it got
dark and a snow storm finally hit that had been pestering us that afternoon.
We missed on critical section of down climbing and had to leave part
of our rope behind in order to get down.  Cutting/leaving the rope and
getting my butt of the mountain was one of the easiest decissions of
the day.  We pushed ourselves in making a one day ascent of the Grand
because of past knowledge.  We escaped, others have not ...

I think that when ever any us push ourselves due to added knowledge
about how dangerous or difficult a situation is we could also add in
the following: if I did not know any better would I still do this ??
Sometimes ignoance is bliss, othertimes it is not.

A comment about what makes a good avalanche forcaster is one that
knows where the fine line and takes two steps backwards.  A really
good forcaster will take two additions steps. (A quote from Bruce
Tremper - head of the Utah Avalanche Forcast Center).

Kudo's to Lowell for a great observation.

Allen Sanderson 

Salt Lake City, Oootah
Newsgroups: rec.skiing