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New trends in avalanche safety

Canadian Avalanche Association (CAA) brings together avalanche industry people at its annual meetings every year. Through May 4 th and May 6 th our team attended this year’s meeting as well. The goal was to let people know and make them aware of backcountrysafety.com web site. Then also to meet backcountry safety professionals and to find out what’s new in the industry.

This article is a brief summary of issues that were discussed at the meeting and our notes about these issues. Most of them will be discussed in more detail later on in the following articles.

Backcountry safety issues

Among the most stressed avalanche safety issues were avalanche terrain evaluation/assessment and professionalism.

Since everybody talked about snow stability tests and snow profile tests in the past very few people raised questions about the terrain’s importance in avalanche risk management. Therefore avalanche terrain evaluation became a hot potato at the meeting where quite few presenters focused their efforts on explaining how important the terrain is when choosing a safe route.

Then the last day of the meeting (with a title “Professionalism at Crossroads”) professionalism became a number one issue. “Are guides really professional? Are we as industry really professional? Can we improve?” – these sort of questions were asked over and over. Some people liked it some didn’t.

What do we think about the meeting?

Overall, the meeting had a very high quality and speakers such as Bruce Jamieson, Ian McCammon, Grant Statham, Pascal Haegeli and others were proof of that. They are leading figures in backcountry and avalanche safety research in Canada and US. Their presentations were excellent and the whole community should be thankful for their work and enthusiasm.

Backcountry and avalanche safety trends

Bruce Jamieson presented (with his students) an undergoing 5 year research project that focuses on snow stability assessment through evaluating and looking for patterns in snow cracks when using all sorts of stability tests and methods. At the end of this effort there should be developed some sort of new, more accurate snow stability test that will help backcountry skiers in evaluating snow stability. Or at least this research will result in collecting much more complete information about the snow pack than we can collect now.

On the other hand of researchers, new methods or terrain classification there is an important thing to remember – how do we communicate all this to public? Fortunately there were people that asked the same question and their presentations focused on effective communication and information sharing between professionals and public.

New avalanche safety equipment on the horizon

Since everybody seems to agree that the prevention is the most effective method how to survive when backcountry skiing, telemarking or snowboarding avalanche safety gear manufacturers play also an important role in reducing avalanche victims numbers.

There were few of them presenting their equipment but a new avalanche beacon from Ortovox caught our eye the most since everything else can be found in stores already.

New Ortovox S1 will be on North American market before 2005/2006 winter and seems to be one step further ahead of its competition. We think it will be as advanced as was new Pieps from Stubai when it came on the market last winter. These improvements are very important because it pushes other manufacturers to develop even more effective backcountry and avalanche safety gear.

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