In the past week two different men died in avalanches in the Utah backcountry; the first two this season, and hopefully the last. As always in these daze of social media, there were the standard RIPs and “died doing what he loved” comments, and as per normal in fatalities in activities that some people think are extreme there were the righteous comments along the lines of “what are they doing out there!? They should NOT be going!” Many in our community understand that these comments are borne out of a bit of ignorance; simply the number of people out skiing safely in the backcountry over the last week of high avalanche danger is indicative of the fact that going out skiing even in high danger can be done with proper basic avalanche education, experience, and understanding.
Some folks might be surprised that the number of annual avalanche fatalities has not risen much over the last 40 years despite the dramatic rise in numbers of people backcountry skiing and riding (snowboarding) in the backcountry. I think it’s safe to say that the number of active participants in this sport has conservatively increased 20-fold, yet fatality numbers stay consistent. Avalanche experts point to better education that is more widespread across the expanding population of backcountry enthusiasts and an increased awareness and emphasis on the psychological factors that play into the decision-making process that skiers go through as they travel through the mountains. Salt Lake local and renowned avalanche data wizard Ian Ian McCammon is very much a pioneer in this “field” (if it can be called that?) with the identification of “heuristic traps” back in 2002, which basically categorized various reasons for overconfidence being generated by a few different psycho/social factors.
There was a shared statistic of these two recent avalanches that has generated a lot of angst from the inside community: both these guys were alone. There are many people – experienced and ignorant – who feel like backcountry skiing (or any “extreme” activity) should not be done alone. Coincidentally, Ian recently posted a paper that revisited the stats of the last couple of decades since his early work to re-evaluate the sorts of risk factors associated with avalanche accidents and found that over the 20% of fatalities were solo travelers. Fortunately, the numbers were small; 2-11 fatalities per year, over 40 years.
That all being absolutely true, I backcountry ski in avalanche terrain alone.
I am not proud of that fact, nor am I ashamed of it. I do so after giving it a lot of thought about the various arguments that people have: what if I get hurt? what if I get buried in an avalanche? will search and rescue folks be put at risk? what about my loved ones? Here are some of my thought processes:
Getting hurt – this is real. A year ago I was skiing in about the mellowest terrain there is in these parts on a day with no ambitions, and somehow I fell over a small cliff and kinda wrecked my knee. Fortunately my wife Ashley was with me and able to help me get my shit together and I was able to ski out on one leg. I have had other friends blow ACLs, whack heads on trees, and break backs and femurs out in the backcountry. It happens. That’s why I carry an inReach mini with me to call for help (for me and for other backcountry folks in need as well). Though I’m sure it has happened somewhere in the West, I don’t know of anyone who got injured skiing and subsequently died of exposure.
Rescuers – It’s important to keep in mind that search and rescue (SAR) folks want to do searches and rescues; indeed, they literally volunteer for them (Salt Lake’s SAR team is largely volunteer-based). It’s what they train for, they learn new skills, and they exercise that deeply-held need that we all have of helping others. I had a great friend who was a firefighter, and when I’d ask him how a work day went he would sometimes bemoan the fact that there were no fires or accidents during the shift; his job satisfaction was other folks’ calamities! Additionally, SAR teams always have the concept of “rescuer safety is paramount” as a top priority and as such they do a LOT of risk mitigation in a myriad of ways. Sometimes it may be perceived that they do so much risk mitigation that it hinders efficiency and searches take longer than they “should”, but again these are volunteers and accidents happening to rescuers whilst searching for accident victims simply can’t happen.
Triggering an avalanche – I find it ironic that while there are some who say “Don’t ski alone!” there are also those who say “Well, I didn’t ski that line, because I was alone.” This assumes that the latter folks would have skied it – or at least would have given it much more consideration – if indeed they’d had a partner. Turning the risk factor down when you are alone is so common it is practically endemic. So is it really “more dangerous” to ski alone? If you ski with a partner, what do you expect from that person: talk you out of something stupid you are about to do? Or….would you actually ski it because you “have a partner”…whom you hope can dig you out of 6-foot-deep snowy grave of avalanche-hardened deposition snow? Are you actually fooling yourself – or your partner – that you or her/him are in some way acting as a precaution?
In that same recent paper Mr. McCammon noted that trauma deaths in avalanches now account for 50% of avy fatalities, not the 25% that was generally accepted in 2002 and since. Therefore, it follows that because you have a partner with you it’s okay to ski a slope with a 50% chance of killing you before you even get buried and asphyxiate in 15 minutes? Interestingly, one day I was on Patterson Ridge, a line named after our friend Craig who was indeed skiing alone (and was killed by trauma) with another friend whom I didn’t know too well, and I let myself get lured into a situation that resulted in a big slide that nearly killed me. I wouldn’t have been on that line, on that day, had I been alone.
I was also involved in another, more-serious avalanche incident and was one of the few very lucky ones who was able to execute a live recovery of a friend. It’s a traumatic experience that I can assure you no one wants to have. So if you are more willing to take more chances with a partner in tow, that ostensibly means you are more willing to risk your life and badly traumatize your partners. Ironically, on the high-danger day of the accident I went out solo and was involved in the accident only after I had connected with partners out after a coupla runs. I think the four of us involved all agreed later over beers that we would not have had that accident if we had not connected that day.
It’s important also to keep in mind that the beacon/probe/shovel kit that we carry is a set of last resort tools, which are deployed when you have made all of the mistakes that led you to an accident. Mistakes that can just as easily be made in a group or with a partner. Actually, when you’re alone and not talking with your pards on the skin track about The Big Game or the movie you saw last night you’re more acutely aware of your surroundings, your safety, and the situation; you have more time and mental space to continuously be evaluating your environment and ponder the decisions that can lead to or away from those mistakes.
Alone you are also less vulnerable to some of Ian’s heuristic traps. In his words: “The commitment heuristic is the tendency to believe that a behavior is correct to the extent that it is consistent with a prior commitment we have made. This heuristic is deeply rooted in our desire to be and appear consistent with our words, beliefs, attitudes and deeds.” When you don’t have anyone around to care about your prior commitments, it’s a lot easier to walk away from them.
Another one: “The social proof heuristic is the tendency to believe that a behavior is correct to the extent that other people are engaged in it. Cialdini (2001) provides a comprehensive review of research supporting the idea that others’ behavior and even mere presence has a powerful influence on our decisions.“ If you’re alone, there’s no one else engaged in your decisions.
The scarcity heuristic. “Most skiers are familiar with the “powder fever” that seizes the public after a long-awaited snowstorm. Intent on getting first tracks down a favorite run, hordes of skiers flock to the lifts and the backcountry, often throwing caution to the wind as they compete with each other to consume the powder that is untracked for a limited time only.” It’s a lot easier to shrug and ski a tracked up, low-angle, and quite safe slope because you don’t feel the pressure from your partner(s) to ski the scarce resource of untracked snow.
The one heuristic that can nip us soloists hard is the familiarity heuristic. Again, McCammon: “The familiarity heuristic is the tendency to believe that our behavior is correct to the extent that we have have done it before. In essence, this heuristic amounts to a kind of mental habit where our past actions are proof that a particular behavior is appropriate.” This one can play a lot into our solo psyche, and it takes a fair bit of exercising that brain muscle to kick the mental habit mentioned above to keep reminding yourself that – as all financial prospectuses say in bold – “past performance is not indicative of future performance.”
Another aspect of solo backcountry travel is the concept of education as a function of self-reliance. Going out with others is great: you can bounce your thoughts off them and get their perceptions (“what do we think of the safety of this slope?” is a common refrain in my common crew) but going out by yourself you got….you. It’s a great test to see if you actually retained what you learned in your avy 1 or avy 2 class, you got nobody pushing you so you can dig pits to your heart’s content, there’s no pressure of “dude, we skied this last year and it was fine!”, you can back off without feeling guilty of denial of a pard’s commitment heuristic, or you can ski it because perhaps your partner isn’t very experienced and the concept of charging down a 38 degree slope four days after a storm still scares them. It’s you and your feelings and your experience and your choices, and those are typically a lot easier to deal with than the more-powerful-than-we-care-to-admit social dynamics.
To be sure, the accidents this past week may be outliers: the Davenport Hill fatality is weird because it seems that most everyone who was paying any attention at all “should” have known that line was a bullseye for an avalanche. Perhaps a partner would have talked him out of dropping in, but….if not, there’s absolutely no way a partner could have dug him out of a 20-foot deep burial (in a terrain trap). And because it’s the Central Wasatch where there are people all around the odds of a corpse being left to thaw out in the spring (a common concern, and happened to a guy I knew in Washington who got avalanched from a party above) were essentially zero. To a lesser extent the same was true in the Porter Fork accident, but there are more unknowns (at this point) in that situation to make a determination as to what actually happened.
A good friend has been backcountry skiing in the Wasatch for 40 years primarily alone because it’s safer. I’m a bit more social, my wife is a strong and confident skier and is my best partner, I love skiing with friends, and only go out solo occasionally, and have learned not to be shy about expressing my opinion, and to be okay to say “this scares me.” I try to maintain the theory that my safety/risk equation doesn’t change whether solo or with companions; an avalanche is a terrifying event that has a high likelihood of ending in death or injury, and it’s important to not only acknowledge that but also that the avalanche not only “doesn’t care if you’re an expert” (a memorable quote attributed to Andre Koch in Bruce Tremper’s book “Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain”) but an avalanche also doesn’t care if you’re alone, with a partner, or in a strong group.
So ski in a group, with a partner, or alone; whatever, but try to avoid avalanches as you can, whoever you’re with – or without.
ps – I listened to a good podcast interview with a very thoughtful avy pro this past week that touched on some of this stuff:
“Past performance is not indicative of future performance”. Embrace that. I like your thought process and it’s convincing that alone you’d probably be more objective in analysis/ evaluation of variables & conditions. Sometimes pard pressure can make one blind.
Do you happen to know if either of the two fatalities this week were wearing avy airbags? They’re also a last-resort option but they have changed the solo skiing calculus a bit.
Also I can’t seem to use the podcast link.
Hey Nico – deets on both are still not quite available yet. I have been dragging an exploding pack around for probably a dozen or more years, and have reached for the trigger once as I got hit by the Patterson Ridge avy. I am starting to question it, due to the amount of tree/mixed terrain we ski (airbag efficacy has mostly been tested in EU above treeline) and because our travel varies with the danger; eg. we ski low angle in high danger. But i he challenge comes in those middlin’ times when human-triggered slides are possible.
I don’t think an airbag would have helped in the Davenport accident; seems like a 20′ deep deposition would have overwhelmed an airbag?
Hi Tom,
You asked for feedback I guess and I’m bored at work… A couple of things.
First, you are undercounting smaller avalanches and other incidents. A backcountry user is much more likely to be involved in a small avalanche where rescue is a distinct possibility. It is not always buried 20 feet deep. Also, there are many accidents or other incidents where having people around would be critical. A skier or otherwise could get lost, fall in a treewell, etc. I feel like most of the argument is that the victim is already lost so there is not need for immediate help.
Second, it is hard for me to believe that a group makes worse decisions than a solo traveler. If this is the case then its just not a good group of skiers. I do not often ski without discussing route finding, avalanche conditions or a countless number of other things. If your group is making worse decisions than when you are alone, find a new group.
I think some of your perspective comes from being an advanced skier and an expert backcountry traveler. Also you probably are mostly thinking about skiing on terrain where you are very familiar. Your perspective is completely reasonable in that framing. However, imagine someone just starting out or exploring new, dangerous terrain, like the Canadian Rockies or Rogers Pass. It is hard for me to think you would rather be alone then. At least I wouldn’t!
Still good perspective, and I obviously ski alone often as well. But, I certainly believe it’s safer with a friend.
See you around!
Elliott
Hi Elliot – good stuff, and I am honored that you took advantage of your job-boredom to read and comment!
The concept of groups making “better” decisions than individuals has of course been proven a zillion times in governments and companies. But groupthink and social/psycho/leadership nuances have also conspired a zillion times to create both small and catastrophic failures. Governments, nations, corporations, and small businesses have all made head-scratching decisions that ultimately brought them down. Definitely worth questioning.
Yes, I may be an “advanced user”, but I came to Utah as much of an avalanche/backcountry gumby as anyone, but I learned fast….partly by going by myself.
Timely:
https://lacemine29.blogspot.com/2025/01/shit-happens-fast.html
Enjoyable read Tom. It appears that you have put much thought into this. Thanks for posting.
Good post. One thing I like about skiing alone that you mention is the hyper awareness mode that you can get to with respect to your surroundings and the conditions.
It occurs to me that I need to be diligent on the the familiarity thing (activity, terrain, partners). Some of the important questions to ask yourself may be simple and obvious but are not intuitive and you almost need a mantra or little note to bring them to your brain. We build our “calculations” on what we’ve seen before and if much of that points to success/safe while skiing alone then making yourself think otherwise is a pretty deliberate act to break the confirmation bias. Cheers
Tom, I’ve had this same discussion many times about paddling solo. Of course all of us would rather paddle or ski with a great crew than go alone; the decision is usually either go alone or sit on the couch. If I’m willing to do Class IV with a crew I dial it down to Class III solo. I have been lured into a false sense of security going with a “crew” on Class IV, they end up downstream of me or out of sight and now I’m paddling Class IV alone. Or exposing myself to risk rescuing someone in Class IV. As you say, there is ample evidence of “groupthink” resulting in taking more risk or making bad decisions. It’s a fine line…thanks for the provocative post.
“One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain’t nothing can beat teamwork.” -Seldom Seen
I like the humility you point out; understanding our own mortality, and our partners, and that of the potential rescuers. For whatever reason, I tour alone almost 75% of the time.
To survive as a designer, as an entrepreneur, I constantly have to ask myself what I’m not seeing, what did I misinterpret at that meeting with my foreign distributor, what am I blinded by? Regardless of how badass my team is or how confident we are in our background and intent–things I learned from sad experience in the backcountry.
It doesn’t matter if you’re alone or in a group; these questions are the same.
And Seldom Seen was right, unless you have a humble team.
Many thanks to Ian for his work in the field, and for the post, Tom.
As an often solo backcountry skier, I really appreciate this article. Indeed going alone forces 100% accountability for terrain selection, snow assessment and keeping up on Avi report status. I find often when going with others I end up doing the most thorough assessment anyway and under peer pressure for time and finding good lines to support not just one set of turns but three. As a solo,
I know what tree density I will or will not ski through and I’m far more willing to forgo the steeper but riskier line.
I think solo adds a lot more consequence for minor events of injury or even just gear failure so I wear an Avi backpack and keep my satellite connected iPhone in my chest pocket to mitigate.
To others comments – I think expertise comes from study both on the couch and being super thoughtful in backcountry terrain. So I spent a bit extra time reading posts like this and studying my routes really carefully before I go
Colter sent me this. I wanted to think about the math a little. Take a look.
https://claude.site/artifacts/88f0f696-48a5-494f-a9b8-56e33ea71d45
Assuming a 20% rescue rate for groups (I have no idea what this number is) you’d have to believe that groups increase the risk of avalanche by 20% for it to be about the same risk to go solo.
This muse is evidence that backcountry skiing is a thinking mans game. I enjoy the nuanced rhetoric.