The person most likely to die in an avalanche is a skilled backcountry skier who has recently taken an avalanche safety course.
What an unintuitive statement about risk: the more fluent you feel in alpine travel – even legitimately – the higher your risk of catastrophic consequence, on average.
This statement is supported by research. Increasingly, the snow science community is studying the human risk factors that contribute to avalanche exposure, survival, and fatality. A seminal paper by Ian McCammon identified six heuristics – situational interpretations or mental shortcuts – that facilitate unintentional exposure to appreciable avalanche risk. The heuristics are organized by the acronym FACETS:
Familiarity – “I’ve done this before without consequence. I can do it again.”
Acceptance – “In order to be accepted in the mountain community, I need to be playing in terrain like this.”
Commitment – “I’ve invested time, energy, and money in this expedition. I’m not going to turn back now.”
Expertise – “I know what I’m doing, as do the alpinists I’m traveling with, given their backgrounds.”
Tracks – “Laying down tracks here is a rare experience. I’d better rip it before someone else does. I may not have the chance to do this again.”
Social facilitation – “Everyone else is doing it, so I’m safe.”
As someone who enjoys pushing her limits in wild mountain environments, I analyze risk often. Frameworks like FACETS and SERENE (a rock climbing anchor-building guide – strong, equalized, redundant, efficient, no extension) help me to organize my assessments, but acronyms alone are not enough. I’m anxiously aware that not all alpine danger can be controlled, or even managed. I’m afraid of my blind spots. I’m apprehensive about nature’s randomness.
I’ve already had a few run-ins with risks that I couldn’t see until it was too late (don’t tell my mother). A hold blew on my climbing partner when she was leading a pitch in Red Rocks. She took a serious whipper, and as her belayer, I was driven into the rock and shredded the skin on one of my legs. We had minimized risk to the extent possible without staying in bed, and our gear did its job – a well-placed number 7 nut held her fall, and we were both wearing helmets. But nonetheless, I ended up bleeding, and she ended up too close to the ground for comfort. Everything happened, and nothing happened.
I’ve wandered frighteningly close to incensed rattlesnakes while I was dozens of miles from another party or medical care. I’ve questioned my vertical pursuits after a climbing acquaintance took an inexplicable 50-foot ground fall and had to spend a year rehabilitating before he could miraculously walk again. And in perhaps the scariest moment of my life, I was buried alive, unable to move, when a snow cave collapsed on me in Yellowstone a few years back. None of these dangers registered at the time – at least not acutely and concretely – and with perfect hindsight, I’m humbled by the influence of luck in producing ultimately benign outcomes.
The high country makes me happy.
And yet, the more skilled and practiced I become in alpine travel, the greater my desire is to push farther, faster, lighter, more creatively. My mountain forays so far have relied on running, backpacking, and rock climbing. To reduce risk in these environments, I cultivate a massive fitness base, invest in high-quality equipment, do my research, and dissect my motivations. I always take enough gear to be out overnight, even on the shortest explorations. I don’t climb with people who are cavalier about safety, talk a big game, or take pride in epics. I refuse to lead anywhere near the edge of my abilities and chance falling on gear or, worse, falling without gear. These principles have thus far served me well.
I’m considering risk right now because as this new year gets underway, I’m aiming to move deeper into the backcountry and pursue higher summits with burlier approaches. I’m also planning more mountain snow travel, an environment in which I’m unpracticed. In this context, I suppose this musing on risk boils down to a few questions:
What risks are worth taking?
Without exposure, how can I learn?
How can I manage the risks I cannot anticipate, or even imagine?
These questions also resonate with my day job, where I think a lot about climate change risk analysis and mitigation. Climate change risk is often defined as the interplay of exposure and vulnerability, a definition that I’d say equally applies to mountain environments. Some climate change risks we can see clearly and plan for – sea level rise, for example, can be easy to generally predict and mitigate against (technically, that is, not considering questions of political will, legal latitude, and financing). But others – catastrophic tipping points, say, or nonlinear compounding effects like wildfire and extreme precipitation prompting landslides – defy our predictive tools and may even push beyond the boundaries of our current scientific imagination.
Paradise, California was safe, until it wasn’t.
As climate change accelerates, how can our civic systems permit conversations about the risks we’re willing to tolerate? Are coastal views worth likely property loss? Does the tranquility of rural living outweigh the dangers of a flammable wildland-urban interface? Is nuclear power worth it, knowing that nuclear waste will radiate for millennia? From a satirical (cynical?) perspective, is the accumulation of immediate wealth worth the possible collapse of civil society?
Without exposure to climate change – fire, floods, storms, food shortage, war, extinction, loss, grief – how can we learn? Is it possible to prepare for climate change without suffering, or must suffering be our teacher? And do we have enough time for this wicked learning?
And how can we manage the climate change risks we cannot anticipate? We cannot know what our shared future will hold, and as I’ve written before, the technical and social tools of our past will not be the tools of our future. Furthermore, climate change risk exposure is inherently probabilistic, which is one reason that collective response is exceedingly difficult. Just as the skier never believes she will be the one to die in an avalanche, so too does each of us believe that we will never be the one to die in a climate disaster. But our statistics are made up of people who never thought it would be them.
I admit that conclusion is a bit of a downer, so let’s end with a Buddhist joke, ancient wisdom for our modern times: the cause of death is birth. We might as well live while we’re alive, so I’ll see you out there on the mountain!
Naked rock, thin air, adventure, possibility, risk, reward.