C
cowboysedge
Well-known member
As many of you know we lost three friends to an avalanche on Feb 27 2009 in the Snake River Range.
Since then I have been going over pictures of the slide, the avalanche advisories, and videos of our friends riding in the months before the accident.
I am searching for any clues as to what lead up to this terrible accident. I call it an accident because when they left to go riding that morning they all planned to return home.
I am an avid snowmobiler. I have attended an Avalanche Awareness class. I love to climb steep untouched mountains. I ride an 800 turbo and love to ride in areas that test your skill and ability of riding. Just as my friends did.
Although riding the past couple of weeks has been hard I am back on the snow. I'm just doing things a little different. Smarter I hope.
If any one has any thoughts or info to add to this post not only about this avalanche or any other avalanche it would be greatly welcome!
In my studies I have found this write up.
http://www.mec.ca/Main/content_text.jsp?FOLDER<>folder_id=2534374302881868&bmUID=1237827519107
"What Were They Thinking?"
In hindsight, in the comfort of a classroom or bar, it's usually easy to see why an avalanche accident occurred. Perhaps the party chose to ski or ride a dangerously wind-loaded slope, enter a terrain trap during high avalanche danger, or continue climbing despite signs of recent avalanching. Working backward from a tragic outcome, the danger seems obvious to us and we wonder why anyone would take chances in such conditions. The easy answer is that the party must have been incompetent, arrogant, or just plain foolish. These answers help us feel better about ourselves since, after all, we wouldn't act like that. But they don't lead us to a better understanding of how we might be fooled into making the same mistakes.
To really understand human factors, we need to go back in the accident timeline. We need to imagine ourselves standing at the top of the slope, trying to decide if it is safe to ski or ride. Perhaps we've seen the signs of danger, but we also know that we have skied the slope many times before without incident. Or perhaps we know that another party is powering up behind us intent on skiing the same slope. Or perhaps we've waited all year for this vacation so we could highmark slopes just like this one.
Such knowledge tends to blur our judgment and tempt us into believing that it's OK to take a chance on this slope today. These influences operate in the shadowy edges of our subconscious, and we are often oblivious to their effects on our behaviour.
Fortunately, there are predictable patterns in how these unconscious influences affect our decisions. It turns out that these same patterns appear whenever we face physical hazards such as driving, unsafe sex, taking drugs and, yes, dealing with avalanches. These patterns are well known in areas such as advertising and health psychology, but their lessons apply to decision making in avalanche terrain as well
Since then I have been going over pictures of the slide, the avalanche advisories, and videos of our friends riding in the months before the accident.
I am searching for any clues as to what lead up to this terrible accident. I call it an accident because when they left to go riding that morning they all planned to return home.
I am an avid snowmobiler. I have attended an Avalanche Awareness class. I love to climb steep untouched mountains. I ride an 800 turbo and love to ride in areas that test your skill and ability of riding. Just as my friends did.
Although riding the past couple of weeks has been hard I am back on the snow. I'm just doing things a little different. Smarter I hope.
If any one has any thoughts or info to add to this post not only about this avalanche or any other avalanche it would be greatly welcome!
In my studies I have found this write up.
http://www.mec.ca/Main/content_text.jsp?FOLDER<>folder_id=2534374302881868&bmUID=1237827519107
"What Were They Thinking?"
In hindsight, in the comfort of a classroom or bar, it's usually easy to see why an avalanche accident occurred. Perhaps the party chose to ski or ride a dangerously wind-loaded slope, enter a terrain trap during high avalanche danger, or continue climbing despite signs of recent avalanching. Working backward from a tragic outcome, the danger seems obvious to us and we wonder why anyone would take chances in such conditions. The easy answer is that the party must have been incompetent, arrogant, or just plain foolish. These answers help us feel better about ourselves since, after all, we wouldn't act like that. But they don't lead us to a better understanding of how we might be fooled into making the same mistakes.
To really understand human factors, we need to go back in the accident timeline. We need to imagine ourselves standing at the top of the slope, trying to decide if it is safe to ski or ride. Perhaps we've seen the signs of danger, but we also know that we have skied the slope many times before without incident. Or perhaps we know that another party is powering up behind us intent on skiing the same slope. Or perhaps we've waited all year for this vacation so we could highmark slopes just like this one.
Such knowledge tends to blur our judgment and tempt us into believing that it's OK to take a chance on this slope today. These influences operate in the shadowy edges of our subconscious, and we are often oblivious to their effects on our behaviour.
Fortunately, there are predictable patterns in how these unconscious influences affect our decisions. It turns out that these same patterns appear whenever we face physical hazards such as driving, unsafe sex, taking drugs and, yes, dealing with avalanches. These patterns are well known in areas such as advertising and health psychology, but their lessons apply to decision making in avalanche terrain as well
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