Human Factors

You are the one making the final decision based on your knowledge, experience and the influence from other people in your party.

Whether you are skiing, hiking, or riding a snowmobile, traveling through avalanche terrain should be an actively evaluated risk. What is risk?

Actual Risk vs. Perceived Risk

Risk is the likelihood of an outcome, multiplied by that outcome’s severity. When moving through the backcountry, you continuously assess the risk and decide what to do based on the information you have. Unfortunately, people tend to take larger risks in avalanche terrain than they comprehend due to missing information, experience, or heuristic fallacies which lead to poor decisions.

Risk perception may vary from person to person depending on skill level and experience. Each of us makes calculations between the benefit of entering avalanche terrain, our skills to handle avalanche conditions, and the signs of avalanche danger that are present. But at the same time, we tend to be less rational in this process of making decisions than we might hope.

Mental shortcuts, or “Heuristics”

In the mountains, we are very susceptible to mental shortcuts that lead us to overlook the actual risk. As a result, we tend to expose ourselves to greater risk in the field than we might say we would while planning at the cabin. There are four main mental shortcuts that many people make, which lead to misalignments between actual and percieved risk: Familiarity, Social proof, Scarcity, and Commitment.

Familiarity

We believe that our decision to enter avalanche terrain is safe because we have done it before in similar conditions, or that we know a specific area particularly well. It then becomes easy to skip the same decision process that you may take if you are in an entirely new backcountry zone.

Social Proof

When in the backcountry with larger groups responsibility is often spread across too many individuals, leading to it being diluted. This also can mean that nobody takes the lead. Group members often start following one another’s’ decision making, even if those decisions and their associated risks have not been thoroughly evaluated.

Scarcity

Nobody wants to ride on an entirely tracked out mountain - even more so if there haven’t been many powder days in a given season. In situations where riders feel like they won’t otherwise get to ride in those conditions, desire to ride can cloud evaluations of actual danger.

Commitment

Sometimes pride in having committed to a plan to ride a certain line can get in the way of objective risk evaluation. When you have a plan A have no attractive plan B, it becomes too easy to accept continuing, even if dangerous conditions are present. When your decision is between skiing a dream line or going back down to the car, it can be hard to make the right call.

Other avalanche factors...

Weather Factors

Temperature, wind activity, and loading of new snow can all impact the stability of the snowpack on any given day.

Snowpack

Understanding the composition of the snowpack is critical to understanding the risk of avalanches occurring.

Terrain Factors

Recognizing avalanche terrain is therefore crucial and could prevent the possibility and severity of an avalanche.

Slab Avalanches

A slab avalanche is an avalanche that loosens as a large, cohesive area of snow of snow and slides downwards.

Loose Snow Avalanches

A loose snow avalanche is an avalanche that releases from a single point and spreads downwards in a cone shape.

Find an Avalanche Course

This information is meant to be an introduction to avalanche safety and a knowledge base for backcountry travelers.

But reading it cannot replace real experience in reading conditions and making decisions in the field. We strongly recommend that all backcountry travelers take instructor-led avalanche courses to get hands-on experience in wild snowpacks.