Comfortable Patterns

Yesterdays flashback to 2007 is a precursor to tomorrow's post about hazards when sea kayaking and how the nature of the hazard can be completely flipped on its head. In 2007, not one but two rain events occurred while we were spending a week skiing in the Kokanee Range in the Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia. Rain on fresh snow inevitably triggers a widespread avalanche cycle, and, when the temperature drops afterwards (as it always does in mid-winter), the risk from avalanches decreases to near zero, but the risk of slipping, sliding, injury, even death on steep, icy slopes suddenly shoots sky high.

I had probably half a dozen (if not more) ski weeks in the Kokanee Range but the one that is burned into my brain is 2007 because, despite the classic progression of the Pineapple Express (starts with snow, progresses to rain as the warm wet air moves through is followed by a freeze as the cold front passes), the skiers on the trip did not recognise that their risk mitigation strategies needed to completely flip, from worrying about avalanches, to fretting about what is recorded annually in Accidents in North American Mountaineering as “involuntary glissades.” Involuntary glissades are slips on steep and icy snow slopes, and if not arrested rapidly, can quickly become deadly. Arresting without an ice axe is possible, but requires practice and most people do not practice near enough if at all, and most practice is with an ice axe, not skis and a ski pole.

In 2007, after the first Pineapple Express, the snow froze solid. It was tough to get an edge in, even kick a ski boot in. Doug and I, who live by the weather forecast, had brought in ski crampons, boot crampons and ice axes. No-one else had, although in follow up years, some folks who took note of 2007 turned up on later trips with ski crampons.

These ski weeks were a loose collection of individuals, which changed by the year, although there was often a core cohort who came together for a week of skiing with no defined leaders. There is no such thing as “leaderless groups” where decision is made by consensus. Someone, not necessarily the most qualified someone, rises to the top, particularly in novel situations. As humans are prone to conflate confidence with competence, very often the person who floats to the top as the leader is simply the loudest individual.

The unofficial drill on these ski weeks was that over a communal breakfast, people would sort into groups of who was going where to do what. The morning after the first rain event of the week, people were talking around breakfast about the risk of avalanche and where they would ski that day. The hazard however, had completely flipped. The risk people needed to mitigate were slips on snow. Around Kokanee, those slips could be very dangerous indeed as any journey at all required travel through timbered slopes. An uncontrolled slide could result in broken limbs, a broken head (no-one wore helmets in those days), even a fatality. Without ski crampons, most folks were at a distinct disadvantage. I remember saying, in my blunt outspoken way “forget avalanches, you need to worry about going for a slide.” Everything, apart from a skier, that was going to slide, had slid!

Doug and I chose long tours with mostly gentle slopes to ski. Despite that, we had one narrow miss when a skier lost his ski edge as we approached the acme of Tanal Peak and began to slide down a steep treed slope. Somehow, he managed to claw to a stop and thereafter removed skis and kicked steps up. The same day, across the valley on the steep slopes leading to the Kokanee Glacier, the folks who had followed one of the louder individuals had scared themselves witless on the steep icy slopes and all but one or two had sensibly turned around. Amazingly, this behaviour was repeated later in the week as different people followed, got scared witless and retreated.

There were people in the group who had spent 20 years or more ski touring, and yet the mental gymnastics required to flip over their risk mitigation strategies was missing. Mental flexibility is tougher than we all think. We get so used to thinking about start zones and convex rolls and wind slabs, and neglect to think about steep icy slopes, trees, cliffs, rocks, skiers locked onto their skis with cranked up bindings, hands in ski pole straps and the risk that these individual components collect when lumped together. It is, in essence, a novel new experience and our old comfortable patterns no longer fit.