Sadly, each year adds to the list of injuries or fatalities. Many of these accidents would have been avoidable, given greater care or knowledge, or if the victims had even paused to consider that an avalanche might be possible. In making practical assessments of avalanche risk, there is no substitute for knowledge of snow conditions which comes from years of experience. The novice or the less frequent winter mountain user will still enjoy a safe day out if some basic principles are learned and acted upon. Avalanches can happen to you Having accepted this, you have greatly reduced your chance of ever being involved in an avalanche.
Snow is deposited in successive layers as the winter progresses.
These layers may have dissimilar physical properties. An avalanche occurs when one layer slides on another, or the whole snow cover slides on the ground. An avalanche may be dry or wet, according to whether free water is present in the snow. It may be of loose snow, when the avalanche starts at a single point or a slab avalanche which occurs when an area of more cohesive snow separates form the surrounding snow and slide out. In practice, any snow slide big enough to carry a person down is important.