Why did you turn back?

From the perspective of a (non-skiing) safety professional, one of the most peculiar things about recreational snow safety is the almost total focus on the study of fatal and near-fatal avalanche accidents.    To avid skiers, this probably sounds stupid – after all, fatal avalanche accidents are what we’re trying to avoid.

But consider this – responsible companies don’t wait until workers suffer fatal or near-fatal accidents, and then analyze only those accidents to develop their safety plans.   They spend a lot of time studying the behavior and decisions of all workers – in particular those who aren’t busy having accidents.  It turns out that most good industrial safety is based on establishing a range of safe behavior (around dangerous machines, for example), and taking corrective action long before workers move outside those parameters - i.e. BEFORE accidents happens.   To do this, safety professionals need to watch not only the actions of workers – via time and motion studies, for example – but they need to understand their thought and decision processes.

In this spirit, then, it might be useful to all who venture into the back-country (and out of bounds), to talk about why we decide  turn back - be it at the trail-head, on the approach, at the top of the line, or at the boundary rope.    A number of snow safety organizations are thinking seriously about this aspect of recreational avalanche safety - it was discussed quite a bit at the ISSW last year.     Surveys are being developed, and as they become available, we’ll share them here along with stories and statistics from other states and countries.

In the mean time, however, we ’ve decided to start this thread so that we can share what we see, feel, hear, smell or otherwise sense that makes us turn around.   We realize this can be a delicate subject for lines that are illegal, out of bounds, secret stashes, or just good old trade routes where we don’t want to see anyone but our buddies.      Whenever that’s a concern, please feel free to just sign the comments anonymously.