Just come back from two days of awesome touring on the Cairngorm Plateau to home and get grief from Mrs G about how irresponsible I am to go and ski off piste in the mountains.  It turns out the British lawyer killed in Italy recently is related to wifes best friend. The funeral is this week - leaves his wife and two children under 5 - family obviously devastated.

Been ski touring for 20 yrs, sometimes with and sometimes without a qualified guide - 9 people have died who I knew from ski touring / off piste skiing.  I have never considered stopping as its something that I love doing.

But is it worth it?

Be grateful for thoughts.

I think only you know the answer to this question. For you to accept the personal risks to do the thing you love is the easy part. I guess it’s the consideration of others and the responsibility you owe those who may be close to you which can be the hardest part to take into account.

I guess the main thing is to never let complacency take over experience and try to eliminate foreseeable risk.
Oh and don’t forget to do the risk assessment before next jumping in the car to work - perspective is everything.

The British man who died on the Haute-Route is a tragedy for his family. As anyone reading PisteHors will have seen this has been a unstable season regarding snow conditions. It is only recently that I’ve felt things to finally be stable enough to risk some more serious routes, althought the recent fresh snow and wind gives pause for thought. That said you would be unlucky to actually be killed by an avalanche, ski touring probably ranks with motorcycling in terms of risk of accident.

Is it worth getting grief from the missus? Probably not. Reminds me of the ski tourer who took on a mistress. He said that when he wasn’t at home the wife was happy because she knew he was safe with his mistress and when he wasn’t with the mistress she believed he was with his wife. In reality the arrangement left him more free time for skiing.

sinbad - 12 April 2010 10:15 PM

Been ski touring for 20 yrs, sometimes with and sometimes without a qualified guide - 9 people have died who I knew from ski touring / off piste skiing.

I’ve been ski touring and off-piste skiing for lotsa years with a number of people and I don’t know anybody who’s died. I do know someone who broke her leg skiing on the piste.

I think 9 deaths out of a reasonable-size community is way too many. I withdrew from participation with a UK skiing organization because I decided that they were having too many close-call accidents.

I’d suggest you rethink your whole approach to ski touring—or at least who you’re doing it with.

Big problems I see with ski tourers are that:
(a) they have too much invested in their planned itinerary or big goals—especially people who only have one or two ski holidays each year—and they refuse to accept that the weather + conditions are not favorable for their plan for every day of their entire ski holiday week.

(b) They tour with groups larger than four, where it’s very difficult to make sufficiently flexible decisions to respond to weather + conditions.

(c) They think that hiring a certified guide will somehow make it safe to go out and accomplish their desired goals without regard to the unsafety of weather + snow conditions - (not noticing how many _guides_ die).

(d) Do not have interesting non-skiing activities readily available to do on several days of their ski holiday. Sharon and I are out cross-country skiing or bicycling on any day when weather + snow are not favorable for ski touring—which usually means several days of a holiday week.

Ken

Agree with the previous posts 9 seems a really high number of people to know who have died either skiing off piste or touring.

I have been skiing for 35 out of my 40 years (isn’t modern kit great ) more tours and resort serviced off piste days than I care to remember, and no one with me or anyone I know has ever died, a number of injuries from falls both on and off piste but no deaths.

As to answer your question only you can decide if the risk is worth it, if I had lost 9 friends am guessing I would be asking some serious questions about the groups approach to back country skiing and overall risk assesment.

In these days of the “facebook” generation with 5000+ “friends” maybe knowing nine people is not such a high figure. Out of people I’ve skied with Edouard Baud and Bruno Geoffrey are no longer with us. Neither died in avalanches although both perished on Mont Blanc. Of the two I only knew Bruno fairly well. However people like Nicolas Wirsching who died this year, I’d crossed or exchanged messages with but would probably never have skied with them.

Ken’s point on guides is sound. 16 or 17 French guides killed in the last 18 months. Other guided groups avalanched. I was speaking to an experienced Tarentaise guide on this very point a couple of weeks ago. He told me of a Haute-Route he’d been booked to do. The conditions were unstable without being suicidal and he prayed that his clients would suggest another programme. He said he was so relieved when he met the guys at Argentiere and the first thing they said was that they were not keen on the route and wanted to do some tours/skiing/technique in the area. In the end they did the last part of the route when the conditions had settled down a bit.

Another guide told me of a client, a strong climber, who has booked him for the Matterhorn 5 times and they have never climbed the route because the conditions were not good.

As McCammon says, to ski tour or climb you need to be a motivated individual and that often gives you “go/summit fever”. The film Vertical Limit, although widely mocked, explores this aspect of climbing.

9 out of 5000 for an activity which lots of people (esp in UK) do no more than 15 days of the year, say for over 20 years, comes to a annualized mortality rate around 2 per 1000. I think that’s a pretty substantial “add” to the typical mortality rate for very healthy people for most ages in the range of 30 to 55 years old.
(Since most ski tourers are very healthy individuals, their expected mortality is substantially lower than general population mortality, and lower than mortality tables inflated for the purpose of conservatively calculating life insurance company “reserves”.)

My experience with skiers I know: It’s not just that I don’t know anyone who died—I don’t know anyone who’s been buried (not even partially buried). Lots of people I know (including myself) have been in small sluffs that where we stayed on the surface.

Nor do I know anyone who’s ever talked about participating in a beacon search of someone else buried.

Crevasses? I do know somebody who fell into one in France. He was directly following his guide (fully certified) at the start of the Haute Route. He was quickly rescued without serious injuries, and completed the HR that week.

My point is similar to Anselme Baud’s: People seem to talk as if beacon searches and partial burials are a normal inevitable part of backcountry ski touring. I do not agree. Yes some people are just very unlucky. But in many cases they’re ignoring one of the “basics” (or often multiple “basics")—typically basic guidelines which they could easily recite if asked.

David is right: Ski mountaineering tourers are typically pretty goal-oriented people. So they’re tempted to bypass basic safety guidelines in order to achieve.

So I think the critical question is:
Given that’s the kind of person I am, how do I have to structure my social connections, and trip environment, and decision-making process, so that I don’t fall into that temptation?

Starting point on answer:
Read the human factors chapter in Bruce Tremper’s book, and take radically seriously what it says, and change any aspect of your ski touring strategy that conflicts with it.

Typically this implies scrapping most of the apparatus of club trip organization, or much of the traditional approach to group ski holidays.

It means seeking out new partners who are committed to the flexible approach and demonstrate good communication and sensitive decision-making.

Ken

Sinbad, may be you should ski-tour with your wife, she would make sure you stay on the safer side?

Yes I think I remember one of the hints in Tremper’s chapter on human factors is something like ...

Ski with a smart woman and do what she says.

... (Getting realistic about the skiing under the influence of a mind-altering dangerous drug: Testosterone) ...

Ken

Thanks for views / thoughts esp Ken R.

Like the idea about taking a mistress - very French. Skiing has obvious risks but it would be alot safer than Mrs G finding out about a mistress!!

It is difficult explaining the activity to a non skiing partner and other members of my family - they have images - fuelled by crap reporting in UK press - about skiing off piste / ski touring and its dangers, and have no understanding of the rewards the sport offers.

I am pretty sure I know the answer to my question though

To the 9 - from Philip Jaerschky to James Ryan rest in peace.

Sinbad,
To the friends you’ve lost RIP, may they be charging through bottomless powder on a blue bird day for eternity.

As to explaining what you do and why, I guess a lot of the problem stems from the fact that in todays society people appear scared of everything, guys I used to jump off cliffs with in our late teens and early twenties are scared to let their kids walk 2 miles to school, madness. When asked why I climb, ski, scuba dive etc etc I tend to quote the following, and leave it at that.

A life lived in fear, is a life half lived

adie - 15 April 2010 11:22 AM

A life lived in fear, is a life half lived

My own view is: “Don’t let fear of death stop you from living.” My brother’s favourite version of the same thing is: “All men die, but not all men truely live”

However I also balance this with: “Today I choose not to do the risky route. Tomorrow it will still be there and so will I.”

I agree with the validity of choosing taking risks. And I agree that we need to feel good about choosing not to take a greater risk.

But sitting here at our keyboards typing words to go onto this forum, we tend to assume that this “choosing” is a rational selection among intelligently considered alternatives.

However in many cases of ski touring, the “rational selection” is a delusion.

Two (out of several) sources of irrationality are:
(a) excess testosterone
(b) “groupthink”

Evidenced by the noticeably higher representation in ski touring deaths of:
(a) males
(b) larger groups

The evidence from lots of the deaths in recent years is that the “rational” approach of reading books and taking courses and practicing beacon searches is not sufficient.

It’s time to move onto the next level and learn to realistically manage our irrationality.

Ken