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Adventure Sack
02-18-2018, 12:08
I watched Meru on Netflix. WOW! Im wondering if anyone on here has ever encountered an avalanche and if so how do did you survive (assuming you survived :cool:)

Venchka
02-18-2018, 12:20
Thanks for the heads up about Meru on Netflix. Now I can watch whenever I have time.
Modern avalanche survival depends in large part on the alpine equivalent of marine self-inflating PFDs. No I haven’t been there.
Wayne

Dogwood
02-18-2018, 12:39
Watch Weather Channel's So you think you'd Survive an Avalanche. They offer some excellent tips on wide range of survival topics. So many other tactics. Look online getting the info directly from various sites including S&R, Skiin schools, mountaineering sites....

Feral Bill
02-18-2018, 13:48
I watched Meru on Netflix. WOW! Im wondering if anyone on here has ever encountered an avalanche and if so how do did you survive (assuming you survived :cool:)
I don’t play on steep snowy terrain. Almost all avalanche deaths are abused by risky behavior.

egilbe
02-18-2018, 13:56
Feral Bill is correct. Best way is don't get caught in one. I suspect there will be more than a few triggered on Mt Washington the next couple days.

MuddyWaters
02-18-2018, 14:24
Well, your basics are still to follow good practices, check reports, have transceivers, shovels, probes, and know how to use them. Dig snow pits to check for unstable layers, and proceed one at a time on risky terrain. If caught in one swim to stay on top, right before it stops moving take a deep breath cover your mouth with your hand reach as high up as you can with the other hand. When it stops moving it's going to set up like cement. Many people have been saved by that hand sticking up out of the snow. Pray your partner's keep you in their sight, and can dig you out within 15 minutes. After that your chance ofof survival diminishes extremely fast

Fortunately I've never been in one more than shin deep. Or maybe it's not fortunate maybe it's because most of my Backcountry skiing has been with guides that were experts at avoiding risky slopes.

It's still a good idea to know what to do because avalanches even happen in bounds at ski resorts occassionally. Sometimes burying people.

Hosh
02-18-2018, 14:32
First and foremost is the terrain. Avys only happen on certain slopes within certain inclination angles. Snow, wind conditions and temperatures affect how snow is condensed with layers that are more slick than others.

Avy classes can teach you how to interpret the snow stack ups, but best to avoid the terrain. If you must, have beacons and probes and know how to use them. If someone survives the trauma, they'll only have minutes before they suffocate.

The Avy packs with inflatable bellows are pretty big and work best for snowmobiling and back country skiing. They may keep the wearer elevated enough to avoid burial, but do little to prevent trauma. There are also breathing vest that dissipate your breath to extend burial time

While I have never been caught inside an avy, I have seen several while snowmobiling, typically caused by the riders. The cascading snow can be as hard a granite and contains lots of debris.

MuddyWaters
02-18-2018, 14:39
Avalanche forecasting is down to a pretty good science these days. But snowpack is very complex. Freeze thaw sublimation and consolidation all or taking place. It's unusual but sometimes and unstable layer of graupnel has persisted completely through the season with a large snow pack on top of it that results in a massive slab fracture late in the season denuding whole mountainsides. And the forecasting missed it

No one hundred percent guarantee in the backcountry.

chknfngrs
02-19-2018, 11:08
If nothing else from this thread (because I don’t live anywhere near the dangers of an avalanche) very stoked to find out Meru is on Netflix

colorado_rob
02-19-2018, 11:32
First and foremost is the terrain. Avys only happen on certain slopes within certain inclination angles. Snow, wind conditions and temperatures affect how snow is condensed with layers that are more slick than others.

Avy classes can teach you how to interpret the snow stack ups, but best to avoid the terrain. If you must, have beacons and probes and know how to use them. If someone survives the trauma, they'll only have minutes before they suffocate.

The Avy packs with inflatable bellows are pretty big and work best for snowmobiling and back country skiing. They may keep the wearer elevated enough to avoid burial, but do little to prevent trauma. There are also breathing vest that dissipate your breath to extend burial time
. I was going to respond with my own somewhat limited wisdom, but Hosh said pretty much what I would have.

Scary stuff. I have a good friend who was hiking along a ridge top with another friend, suddenly she (the first mentioned) was gone, they were inadvertently too close to a cornice edge, broke off right in between them. She rode an Avalanche down, he did not. He managed to get a cell signal, barely, and called 911-SAR as he frantically tried to get down to her. Took him a while, but he finally got down, by the time he did, the SAR folks were probing away. He, Dwight S, approached the SAR folks and asked them if they had any luck finding Sarah... they said sure, she's fine, we're looking for Dwight S... He said "I'm Dwight S !" Happy ending, only a broken nose on Sarah. Close call.... Though she was stuck in hardened snow and could not get herself out, she had a small air passage to the surface, and could breathe plus get her hand out and wave so the SAR folks saw her.

Watch those ridgelines! Sometimes you won't recognize you're travelling on a cornice.

As for probes and beacons.... since they have become popular, I wonder if they have helped or hurt Avy situations? For the most part, they are basically body-recovery devices, though there is a small percentage of the time the victim is found alive and uncovered because of them. BUT, I wonder about the percentage of the time where a hiker/climber/skier that has one (and of course is with others with tme), and because he/she has one, becomes emboldened to go on to terrain that is not safe thinking he/she IS safe because of the beacon... I just wonder if they help, statistically.

Wyoming
02-19-2018, 13:16
I have survived 1 avalanche. On a climbing expedition in Alaska when I was a youngster.

Limited experience obviously. I know one climber who has survived 3 - as you can imagine I avoided climbing with him as that information indicates he is unsafe and not that he is good at survival but rather lucky. But here are some thoughts.

There are wide varieties of snow conditions and types of snow so when you get caught up in an avalanche only some of the advise you see all the time about how to react is going to be applicable in your specific circumstances. 'Some' snow sets like cement as the avalanche settles in and stops. Some is very powdery and a fair amount of air still gets through the snow. Contrary to what some say you do NOT always have any idea where up is until every thing stops. Some times the force of the impact of the air in front of the snow/ice is very powerful and all you can do is turn your back to it all and take a deep breath and pray. Some times the avalanche is slow and not too deep and swimming is very practical and most can stay on or very near the top. In a big fast one - haha.

Best to not get in one of course. If you are skiing and set one off well it is sort of your own fault. In the mountains it can be very hard to avoid places where one can come down on you randomly. Crossing slopes in the mountains it is easy to set one off. Time of day is very important in the risk of setting one off. The type of snow conditions is also critical in setting one off. Think hard about what you are looking at and whether you should venture out on it or find a way around.

In my avalanche there were 6 of us roped up in a chain and we were descending from the summit and crossing high on a snowslope near the base of a set of cliffs. Seemed like the safest place. On the negative side it was well into the afternoon and the temps had warmed up a lot and this is not a good thing. We were strung out a long ways from each other - maybe 75 feet apart each. But we were all on the snow slope at once. It broke free almost all the way up to the cliffs and the entire slope took off a good 150 yards across and well below us. Fortunately it was not real deep - about 4 feet. But it was pretty big. We went down the mountain about 400-500 vertical feet but the slope was not super steep so the speed was not one of those 100 mph things you see videos of.

I swam as best I could but it is was kind of laughable as I often did not know where up was really. Sometimes I would pop up into the air and sometimes I was just tumbling in the soup. When it all came to rest my head and part of my chest and one arm were above the snow - whew!!!! Two others were also head free and three buried out of sight. I and the others quickly dug our way out and we were screaming instructions to each other to follow the ropes to find the others. Amazingly we did. Everyone survived. It seems a bit surprising but I was never scared at all. Maybe I was to busy being caught up in the actions or something. Those who were buried were almost insane with terror when we dug their faces free.