avalanche safety articles from Off-Piste Magazine. Making wise terrain choices, understanding the avalanche forecast, latest avalanche safety gear reviews. Advice from professional mountain guides about route planning, communication and on-the-fly snow stability evaluation
To the Hills & Back is not your typical ski movie. It’s a story of risk and consequence. What is risk? Risk is the likelihood of something bad happening and understanding the consequences. The new Sherpas Cinema film explores the consequences. It’s a story of loss, humility and resilience. No one heads to the mountains thinking about the worst that… Read More
New to backcountry skiing? Looking for basic avalanche safety tips? Short of identifying and avoiding avalanche terrain, staying safe while backcountry skiing begins with understanding hazard basics. Backcountry Access (BCA) has a series of no-frills avalanche safety tips geared toward backcountry skiers of all levels. BCA’s latest avalanche safety video offers five red flags to keep an eye out for… Read More
If you’ve ever taken an avalanche safety course, you’ve probably heard about electronic interference and avalanche transceivers. Electronics like cell phones, heated gloves, smart watches, two-way radios and even snowmobiles can create electromagnetic interference (EMI) that will disrupt an avalanche transceiver search. Basically, some electronics emit EMI that can alter avalanche transceiver behavior. The good news is that you can… Read More
Ortovox Adds Voice Direction to the Beacon Search Equation The advent of digital signal processing was a game changer for avalanche beacon technology. Directional arrows and distance readouts are standard fare. There are a few more pieces to the puzzle — like multiple antennas — but the point is that technology has made using avalanche beacons faster, easier and more… Read More
A Perfect Storm – Reflecting on an Avalanche Accident Never have I fought so hard to suppress the overwhelming urge to panic. Before I realized what I was doing, I heard my own muffled screaming. I told myself to calm down. Again, I realized I was screaming. A few deep breaths later, I gained a small measure of composure. I… Read More
Using Terrain to Your Advantage – Seven Terrain Tricks Safe backcountry skiing starts with a big picture perspective (plus reading and understanding the local avalanche conditions report). Experienced skiers often reference terrain as trumping hazard. In fact, “The snowpack is the problem, and the terrain is the solution,” is an old ski guide’s adage that informs a lot of backcountry decision-making…. Read More
Avalanche Rescue and Snow Pits – The BCA Dozer 2H Shovel Does It All Avalanche shovels are the kind of gear we hope to never really use for their intended purpose of recovering a buried ski partner. But the shovels we all carry have many other uses, primary being to dig snow pits in search of weak layers and to… Read More
Designated Radio Channels for Popular Backcountry Zones It’s commonly understood that avalanche safety often hinges on human-driven factors. Ideas like familiarity with terrain, the expert halo and group communication (or lack thereof) rise to the top of the list as contributors to avalanche accidents. Broadly speaking, group communication is at the root of many mistakes. Communication alone will not overcome… Read More
Know Your Snowpack Stability Tests With the growing complexity of snowpacks around the country, it’s a great time to brush up on your snowpack knowledge, specifically common snowpack stability tests. The following video presentation of snowpack stability tests by Bruce Jamieson and Mike Conlan from the Applied Snow and Avalanche Research Center at the University of Calgary in Alberta offers a lot of… Read More
Can You Dig It – Avalanche Shoveling Technique 101 Avalanche rescue has several stages. The longest and most strenuous aspect of most rescues is the shoveling phase. Proficient shoveling saves vaulable minutes. From where you start digging relative to your probe strike to effectively moving snow, there are several shoveling techniques that help make for fast, efficient recovery of… Read More
Recognizing Avalanche Terrain Avalanche Canada has a webinar series this season covering a variety of avalanche safety topics. Recognizing Avalanche Terrain and Trip Preparedness provides a good introduction to or refresher on avalance hazards. It includes info specific to Avalanche Canada’s website, but more it’s a solid overview for anyone looking to broaden their backcountry knowledge.
Avalanche Rescue Probe Technique Aside from trying to understand the hazard and avoiding avalanches, most backcountry skiers focus their snow safety efforts on efficient transceiver use. Proficency with your beacon is definitely important. However given a burial, shoveling and probing can easily be the most time consuming piece of an avalanche rescue. Backcountry Access (BCA) offers a number of educational… Read More
The classic backcountry ski checklist – shovel, probe, beacon, brain – has also come to include the avalanche forecast, and most of us make the effort to check the forecast before we head into the mountains. But an important question that’s often overlooked is; “Are really absorbing the most important information contained in the forecast?” Sure, the avalanche hazard rating… Read More
I like to start a day of touring with an innocent-sounding question; “Anyone know what the hazard is rated today?” This question is a very effective way to begin a conversation with your touring partners about the current avalanche conditions. I like to follow it up with something like, “Considerable, eh? What’s our main concern?” Now, with a discussion about… Read More
Avalanche Safety – Have a Clear Plan and Conditions Dialogue The number one response I hear from students when asked why they are taking an avalanche class is, “to be safer in the backcountry.” Avalanche instructors work hard to send folks away with many of the tools they need to be safer skiers. Some of these avalanche safety tools are… Read More
