Two seperate incidents in Switzerland yesterday.  Sounds like both groups had lucky escapes after fairly major slides.  Certainly it is reported that the Verbier group were not equipped with tranceivers. 

More detail here:
http://www.planetski.eu/news/4474

it’s been a busy few days. Looks like clustering but only time will tell. Of course lot of terrain isn’t fully opened, not controlled or skier stabilised which may be a problem.

Interesting to note a few things.

1. These are probably not holidaymakers, they’re people from the region rather than actual locals it seems. They’ll have probably been on slopes they skied before. They will have considered themselves to have local knowledge which is an obvious heuristic trap but not so obvious that it’s not widely shared.
2. In Montegnevre there was apparent confusion about the emergency number. The upshot was they dialled 112 which was the “wrong” number but worked anyway. I’m still happy that 112 is the right number.
3. The girl in Tignes survived a long burial but the prompt use of CPR and then advanced life support gave her the only chance she had. ie Basic Life support skills are of equal importance with skills in assessing snowpacks.

Those are good points, especially the pitfalls of local knowledge and experience.  This does seem to breed complacency. 

Opening weekend in Courchevel we saw a lot of people ducking ropes and trying to gain access to higher and steeper parts of the resort which had not been opened yet.  The sheer depth of snow certainly required fairly steep pitches to actually get any skiing.  But considering the pisteurs were still carrying out control work some people were taking some sizeable risks.  Resorts must be having a challenging week getting things open and keeping a lot of very excited people safe.

And it’s snowing here again today.

This local knowledge fallacy is worrying. It’s an obvious heuristic trap* and yet not only are recreational skiers not recognising it they actually turn it on it’s head as being a strength. It’s being reinforced in the advice people are giving each other if you read around now. There’s signs of a lot of reinforcement going on as well, the identification of errors made by others which is basically good but these are dismissed by the mitigations they already have which don’t seem totally justified. ie reading the reports of the Tignes avalanche and concluding transceivers ought to be mandatory rather than identifying terrain selection as important or that some skills in Basic Life Support are required. Basically analysing a situation and finding the reasons it’s not relevant to them rather than finding the reasons that it is. That’s some of what I’m reading bit not all of course.

Megan Michelson wrote quite a moving article for Outside Magazine about the tragedy at Stevens Pass and you can see the traps of familiarity, group thinking, commitment, scarcity and so on.

http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/snow-sports/Tunnel-Vision-November-2012.html?page=all

* there’s a writeup of what a heuristic trap is on this very interweb site : http://pistehors.com/backcountry/wiki/Avalanches/Heuristic-Traps