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The overwhelming reaction I had to this was of how bad the group dynamic sounded. I don't really agree with "severe lack of training and practice caused deaths"

The overwhelming reaction I had to this was of how bad the group dynamic sounded. I don't really agree with "severe lack of training and practice caused deaths". Everyone involved had some degree of backcountry experience - many of them had a lot. The issue wasn't lack of training and practice, the issue was how many of the skiers ignored their training and didn't listen to what their experience was trying to tell them. The primary take-aways I found were to pay more attention to the human factor, keep group size down and route/hazard discussions happening, even (especially?) when skiing with pros or people you really respect and don't ski with all the time. Fairly strongly disagree on hitting the slope at 11:45 and no snow pit being problems though. Totally depends on the day, and I wasn't there, but this thing slid on depth hoar 3 feet down - that's not caused by a little bit of february sun in Washington. As for digging pits, while I think they can be a good tool to get a look at the snowpack, I also think it's easy to rely on them too much. Spatial variability in a snow pack is HUGE, and all a pit does is tell you how the snow is behaving at one little, somewhat random point. Especially if you're a local and ski in the BC all the time, you should have a pretty good sense of what the snow pack is doing without doing any digging at all. In my home range (the Wasatch), I typically use snow pits mostly to test SPECIFIC questions like "how energetic is this known weak layer that I've been watching for days?." Far more useful are small little "hand pits" and pole probes as you go along, feeling the snow pack in a lot of different places to gather more data points. In this particular case, however, everyone already knew it was touchy, a snow pit wouldn't have changed much. The problem was that they didn't plan or ski accordingly.

MartinCron 14y ago
The group dynamic reminds me of a chat I had with a friendly guy at my local motorcycle shop. He calls it "rally fever" when a bunch of guys on motorcycles (or scooters, or whatever) get together for a ride and let their inhibitions slip just enough to take that turn just a little bit too fast. I am sure group rides are lots of fun, but I would be mindful of being extra cautious.
- pinaceae 14y ago
  motorcycle group rides are the worst - overtaking a slower moving vehicle becomes way more risky. the first guy assesses, knows he will fit. second guy has enough power and reaction time to follow. the third+x goes in blind and behind and sometimes goes splat. sometimes because of a vehicle, sometimes because the vehicle in front blocked the view of a tightening turn. riding in a group for a long time also gives you tunnel vision as you follow the guy in front of you all the time. if he goes down, target fixation kicks in and you hit him. a good group has the rookies in front, to set the pace. rookies at the end mean the worst riders need to go the fastest.
  - sageikosa 14y ago
    I ride a commuter train in the greater Philadelphia region, at least once we mostly overshot the station (7 car train) with only two or three cars still at the station. The side-doors at the vestibule end were open; since the station had no platform, the auto-doors were locked in the open state and the stairwells were in the open position. Looking down I could see the rail-bed, then a relatively annoying drop into weeds. If I had decided to descend the steps, exit the train there and walk beside the train back to the station I was certain that I would be OK, but that other people would follow me down that path and get hurt. I didn't want that to happen, so I walked back through the train, and everyone followed.
    - willyt 14y ago
      I was on my way to school, the train got stuck about 100m out of the station because there were ground up leaves causing adhesion problems. The train sat there for about an hour, no announcements or anything, it was packed, people were jammed right up against each other and it was getting hot. Someone lost it, forced the doors open and jumped out, then lots of people just followed them. It was a pretty dangerous thing to do because the third rail was right below the doors and you had to sit on the step and then drop down about 1.5m onto the ballast right beside it. After the first couple of people jumped out I think the train crew probably got the traction current switched off and got some steps out but by then most people had jumped out and started walking on to the next station. So you probably did the right thing there!

MartinCron 14y ago

The group dynamic reminds me of a chat I had with a friendly guy at my local motorcycle shop. He calls it "rally fever" when a bunch of guys on motorcycles (or scooters, or whatever) get together for a ride and let their inhibitions slip just enough to take that turn just a little bit too fast. I am sure group rides are lots of fun, but I would be mindful of being extra cautious.

pinaceae 14y ago
motorcycle group rides are the worst - overtaking a slower moving vehicle becomes way more risky. the first guy assesses, knows he will fit. second guy has enough power and reaction time to follow. the third+x goes in blind and behind and sometimes goes splat. sometimes because of a vehicle, sometimes because the vehicle in front blocked the view of a tightening turn. riding in a group for a long time also gives you tunnel vision as you follow the guy in front of you all the time. if he goes down, target fixation kicks in and you hit him. a good group has the rookies in front, to set the pace. rookies at the end mean the worst riders need to go the fastest.
- sageikosa 14y ago
  I ride a commuter train in the greater Philadelphia region, at least once we mostly overshot the station (7 car train) with only two or three cars still at the station. The side-doors at the vestibule end were open; since the station had no platform, the auto-doors were locked in the open state and the stairwells were in the open position. Looking down I could see the rail-bed, then a relatively annoying drop into weeds. If I had decided to descend the steps, exit the train there and walk beside the train back to the station I was certain that I would be OK, but that other people would follow me down that path and get hurt. I didn't want that to happen, so I walked back through the train, and everyone followed.
  - willyt 14y ago
    I was on my way to school, the train got stuck about 100m out of the station because there were ground up leaves causing adhesion problems. The train sat there for about an hour, no announcements or anything, it was packed, people were jammed right up against each other and it was getting hot. Someone lost it, forced the doors open and jumped out, then lots of people just followed them. It was a pretty dangerous thing to do because the third rail was right below the doors and you had to sit on the step and then drop down about 1.5m onto the ballast right beside it. After the first couple of people jumped out I think the train crew probably got the traction current switched off and got some steps out but by then most people had jumped out and started walking on to the next station. So you probably did the right thing there!