re Skitour members being more cautious I remain unconvinced, particularly with stuff like this:
http://www.skitour.fr/sorties/breche-portetta,48316.html#sortie

A close shave and they just laugh it off & nobody particularly seems to pick up on it, this circuit (up the chamois then down the breche) seems to have become a recent classic, despite it involving skinning up a steep north-facing couloir which gets lots of wind-loading at the top. And the number of people sideslipping the Breche P and trashing it for everyone else is unbelievable… let alone the guy talking about having a ski come off 4 times because his inserts were iced up. Doesn’t seem like a whole lot of risk management (or understanding) there to me…

frank4short - 21 March 2013 09:48 PM

davidof - 21 March 2013 08:03 PM

You can add to that the fact that certain popular routes are so tracked these days they must reduce the risk on those routes compared to the past.

This is the main theory I’ve heard referred to specifically in the Chamonix instance. The fact that because there are so many good skiers that any route that will consistently hold snow will get consistently skied. As a result of which weak layers are frequently purged and tracked snow forms a better base for fresh snow than virgin snow. With this process ongoing it reduces what would otherwise be a near catastrophic accident rate.

Hey Frank4, there may be some truth in this, but the monotonous regularity of accidents in places like the Vallonets (Fornet) which gets hammered and is normally skier pisted after every snowfall puts alot of doubt in my mind about skier pisteing reducing risk, particularly on anything that isn’t a narrow couloir.

A measured analysis from the Chamonix based-

http://www.avalancheacademy.com/news.asp?nid=31