Congratulations

You won the dumb uptrack award for January 21/22. Today we were touring in the West Arm Provincial Park and observed an uptrack switchbacking up a north aspect on a 40 degree slope with a few scattered larch trees nicely spaced to beat your brains out when an avalanche runs through them. We observed no down tracks, and the particular location where the uptrack finally gained safe terrain is easily reached by at least a half dozen other safer routes.

So, sometime during or immediately after a big warm storm with strong S winds and rapid heavy snow-loading, a party of unknown number decided to stack themselves up one above the other for about 300 vertical metres on lee facing avalanche slope with multiple trigger points and terrain traps.

By some fluke of fate, they got away with it, and, in all likelihood skied away congratulating themselves on their excellent route-finding and snow evaluation skills.

Over the same two day period, there was an avalanche cycle and multiple large (to size 3) avalanches remotely triggered in the same mountain range.

Talk about dumb luck. 

This party could just as easily have won the Darwin award

These Are Your Choices

One of the things that can really bug me are the people who say "it's easy for you because you are fit and lean," apparently not realizing that I am neither fit nor lean by chance. In fact, for me to be fit and lean requires continuous hard work and lots of it. After a ski day, while everyone else goes home and puts their feet up with a beer and nachos, I go home and train on my indoor climbing wall and eat a spartan dinner. On days I'm not skiing, I'm doing the Crossfit WOD.

Many, many days I'm tired, hungry and the last thing I feel like doing is beating myself down with another workout, but I do, building, if nothing else, at least some mental toughness to push on when I'm fatigued.

If you are choosing to eat the standard carbo-crashing junkie diet, engage in futile workouts (or no workouts at all) and collapse on the couch at the first sign of any difficulty, then you are choosing to be out of shape and over-fat. And that's not my problem.

Pulling the big roof on Jungle Boy, El Portero Chico

How To Ruin Your Ski Day: Fat Heavy Skis

There seems to be some kind of universal law, much like the law of gravity, that people who are least able to move fat heavy skis through the backcountry buy fat heavy skis. The endlessly repeated argument for fat heavy skis (which, by no coincidence require fat heavy skins) is "I worked so hard to get to the top of the run, that it is imperative I enjoy the run down and a fat heavy ski enables me to do that."

Of course, what the proponents of fat heavy skis don't realize is that they would be less tired and would enjoy the run down more if they had skinned up on a light ski. They would also have the energy to do more runs, and, would ski better on the way down on whatever number of runs they did manage to do were their legs not tired to the bone from dragging a fat heavy ski (and skin) up the slope.

The other problem with fat heavy skis is that they limit the distance people are willing (even able) to travel so people end up skiing the closest slopes that are frequently skied out because 99% of the other skiers out there are also on fat heavy skis and are similarly unable to venture beyond the closest locations. Sometimes, finding good snow requires that you tour to favorable aspects which may be more distance away. Again, those on fat heavy skis either can't or won't make the journey and so again, end up skiing less than favorable snow conditions because they are limited by their equipment.

In fact, the end result is, the fat heavy skis you got so that the ski down was more enjoyable result in less enjoyable skiing for a whole range of reasons. Given that there are high performance light-weight skis on the market now, often for far less money than people are paying for fat heavy skis, there really is no excuse not to wise up.

An awesome run, but those on fat heavy skis will never make it

Be More Efficient

I'm not the fastest skier in the world, but, given the amount of time I spend waiting for other people, I must not be as slow as I think. Some folks are slow because they are out of shape and on gear that is too big, too heavy, too fat to move fast, and some folks just don't know how to move efficiently. Clearly, these two conditions are not mutually exclusive. In fact, a lot of people are both out of shape and on gear that is too big, too fat, too heavy and inefficient. It is hard to be efficient if you are lugging around 10 or 20 extra pounds on your gut, and another 10 on your feet.

So here are some tips for improving your efficiency if you plan to do real ski tours (one run down Acidophillus is NOT a ski tour):

• Get light weight skis, bindings and boots. Any ski set-up over 3 kg is way too heavy;
• 90 mm underfoot is a fat enough ski to handle anything yet not impede efficiency with extra drag and the inability to skin technical slopes;
• Travel at a pace you can keep up all day, even if you are breaking heavy trail;
• Train when you are not out skiing. Do the Crossfit WOD;
• Carry your map (and compass if necessary) in a pocket. Refer to it often and stay found.
• Plan an efficient route.
• Break your own trail if need be. Following someone else's trail is not efficient if it's not going where you are, or it is overly steep and has many switchbacks;
• Learn to break an efficient trail. An efficient trail gradually but continually gains elevation, travels in the direction you are going, avoids unnecessary turns and, generally, does not include kick turns.
• Limit breaks/stops.
• When stopping, combine activities. For example, have a bite to eat while you put your skins on. Stop to take your skins off where you can see the way down and plan your ski strategy.
• Lose the extra 10 pounds around your gut.
  
  
  
   Miles from anywhere after a long, heavy trail-breaking day 

Pilot Error

There is a plan, not a good one, among a group I am a member in, to ski/snowshoe in to a backcountry area, spend a survivalist night out (i.e. no tent); then, the next day, continue on and ski/snowshoe out via a broad, relatively gentle ridge to reach an old road that leads down to the valley. This is a trip I have done twice. In the grand scheme of things, it is not a hard trip involving about 13 km distance and (depending on exact route) about 600 metres of elevation gain. The two times I've done it, we've actually extended the day by doing a few runs first, but we are used to traveling good distances and navigating through the mountains.

The group planning this trip is, overall, lacking in both hard mountain skills - like navigation, route-finding, and route planning skills - and soft mountain skills - like group management - and, I suspect, will be severely challenged by this trip. In fact, the trip is much further (twice as far), through much less obvious terrain in terms of navigation, than this group has gone before. Half the people on the trip will be carrying full packs after spending an uncomfortable night out in the mountains, some will be on faster skis and some on slower snowshoes. In the absence of solid leadership there will inevitably be problems with navigating and group management will be non-existent. I feel confident making these last two assertions as I've been out with this group before in simpler terrain on a shorter trip, and the group was barely able to navigate and demonstrated a complete absence of group management.

Of course, this trip is really not that difficult. With a competent leader, it could easily be accomplished - I know, I've done it twice as a club trip with no problems (it was in fact, an easy day). But, when the leaders don't know what they are doing, won't admit they don't know what they are doing, and refuse to relinquish control to someone who does not know what they are doing, an easy trip can quickly become an epic.

Most accidents/epics are caused by "pilot error" where bad planning precedes bad decisions in the field which leads to errors in process without timely error correction. Incidents, accidents, epics and clusterfucks follow. The "plan" and I use the term loosely has started down that bumpy road.

First, have a good plan

Cognitive Dissonance: This Is What It Looks Like

There is no harm in being sometimes wrong - especially if one is promptly found out.  John Maynard Keynes.

I belong to an organization in which almost every member (particularly the most senior members) are what I would call "no people." These are people who, regardless of the veracity of comments or suggestions, automatically say "no." The no may be qualified by some patently absurd rationalization or it may be just a "no." What is constant across all dimensions is the answer, which is "no."

It took me a long time to make sense of this behavior as frequently there were manifestly obvious signs that poor decisions had been made or events, people and circumstances had been wrongly judged. In other words, there was frequent and strong evidence that the thing they were saying "no" to was correct while their seemingly indefensible option was incorrect.

One day, I was reading a book about why expert predictions fail (a circumstance not dissimilar to the operation of the organization of which I am a member) when I read about cognitive dissonance and suddenly everything made sense.

In 2002, Montier described cognitive dissonance as "the mental conflict that people experience when they are presented with evidence that their beliefs or assumptions are wrong." In order to relieve this conflict people have two options: (a) change their belief; or (b) somehow rationalize away the evidence to resolve the conflict. Most people, particularly those who are deeply invested in their beliefs, will employ option (b).

The organization in question is full of people who perceive themselves to be "expert" in their field and, their "expert" status is very important to their self-esteem and self-image. Therefore, when presented with evidence that indicates they are not expert, the ensuing cognitive dissonance drives them to rationalize away the evidence or simply to ignore it all together.

Understanding why people do something can certainly make dealing with the behavior easier, but I admit to a certain rising level of frustration as time after time their "expert" status is called into question and, instead of learning from their mistakes and actually moving closer towards expert status, all evidence to the contrary is swept under the rug or blithely rationalized away, and opportunities for growth and learning are lost.

One occasion that sticks in my mind as being descriptive of the phenomenon occurred shortly after our organization had made what I consider a serious mistake by deciding to ski, all bunched up together (except for me as I whipped through the area as fast as I could), through a terrain trap during a snow storm in the middle of the night when stability was poor. After the fact, I said that we had all made a bad decision and should be careful not to make such poor decisions in the future. No-one would admit that the decision was bad, and the rationalization I got as to why the decision was reasonable was that any avalanche that occurred would be "only" size two. When I pointed out that a size two avalanche by definition could "bury, injure, or kill a person" my comments were quickly brushed aside and forthwith ignored.

Natural selection in progress you might think. With decisions such as I've related commonplace, extinction might not be far off. I'm just worried they'll take me with them.

If you really need to dig a pit to see what stability is like, you might want to rethink something

Learning From Leadership

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. John F. Kennedy

I lead a lot of trips, both summer and winter, for my local outdoor club, for a variety of reasons. Being retired, I have the time and energy to put in. I also know that I would never have developed my own outdoor skills without mentoring by other volunteer trip leaders in other places at other times. So, some of my apparent "altruism" is motivated by paying back to a community that generously donated to me. There is great camaraderie found in the mountains, and my entire social network is drawn from the outdoors. But, I also find I learn a lot when I lead club trips, much more than if I did the same trip with one or two trusted friends.

When I am out with one or two friends, my trips frequently fall into the "recreation" category (see graph below). While on club trips, because of the extra responsibility of moving a group through the mountains and coaching less experienced people, my trips move up into the "adventure" category. Recreating in the adventure zone is rewarding because your skills are challenged but not to such an overwhelming degree that you end up having an epic.

I've written before about how spending time with newcomers to a sport is great for improving your own skill set and knowledge base. The same goes for club trips. Participants are generally attending a trip (at least one of my trips) because we are tackling some objective that they wouldn't be comfortable doing on their own. Seeing the terrain through their eyes can be a great learning experience if you can let the blinkers drop from your own eyes and admit you don't know everything.

We are best challenged in the adventure zone