Avalanches are a matter of physics.
For the victim, survivor or rescuer involved in the site rescue, an avalanche is a personal, human experience. Let us focus today on those people who work with you or for you. Each individual, whether victim themselves, witness, hasty search team, probeline worker, site commander, county sheriff or wilderness rescue worker, experiences the avalanche rescue event as an individual human being. How leadership and followership deal with the stress, personal risk and safety of participation, and potential death for themselves, their teammates and their recovered victims is the focus of this presentation. The three categories of focus are risk, death and morale.