Comments on: Avalanche Safety Quiz

By: howdy

howdy — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 18:25:53 +0000

Lou,

thanks for stirring the pot a bit..this quiz demonstrates our compulsive need for numbers and objectivety..the addition of numbers some how adds veracity..it seems like the “test your way to safety/good decisions” pardigm needs to shift..every year researchers spend time and money developing new pit stability tests, flow charts for decision making and statistics when the very intuitive idea of spatial variabilty tells us that any results are at best inconclusive if not misleading..your quiz points this out in the arena of education not equaling safety..it seems like avi ed is shifting towards the subjective realm of human behavior..as we make the shift I hope we resist the urge to bring objectivety with us..this will only create more huristics that ultimately are misleading and dangerous(i.e. ‘I dug a pit and had CTH, ECTnil’ or ‘the avi forecast is moderate’ or ‘it feels good to me’)..emptying the mind before making a decision, visualizing the worst case scenario and deciding if its a risk worth taking is the best we can ever do in avalanche terrain..beyond that we have skill, will, luck and tools to keep us happy and alive…

thanks for stimulating thought..much respect to you for your love of the mountains

cheers

By: Lou

Lou — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:16:18 +0000

Howdy, it is designed to result in various benefits for different personality types and experience levels. Mainly, it is a tool to increase awareness. I’m not sure the results are as subjective as results in a continental snowpack, but it’s not intended to be something designed to gather statistics, only to increase awareness. Just the fact that you left an informative comment here means the quiz had one of its intended effects. Thanks, Lou

By: howdy

howdy — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:05:00 +0000

is this quiz an attempt at irony? Its results are about as subjective as pit results in a continental snow pack..if it is irony, nice work..it points out that any attempt to objectively quantify human behavior is a fools paradise..considering that avalanche travel will always be in the catagory of “human behavior” trying to make the act of avalanche travel measurable, quantifiable, controlable or otherwise objective will land a fool in the paradise he seeks..if people can escape from their heavy rational brains and effectively visualize an acurate worst case scenario, like the instinctual animals they are, they might stand a chance at survival..but you probably won’t end up skiing anything good if your not willing to walk the edge near the worst case scenario..”life, unlike canned fruit, is for living not preserving”

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:05:20 +0000

Great little quiz. The questions such as “do you have formal training”, and how its answer affects your risk, are both enlightening and surprising.

I’d like to see some references for the explanations in the discussion.

By: Lynden Don

Lynden Don — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 09:57:26 +0000

Lou

Great test to see where a person truely is on backcountry savy. I’ve been a backcountry traveler for many years and value ongoing education of Avi awareness. Remember the old saying “There are old mountaineers and bold mountaineers but there are never old and bold mountaineers.”
Keep up the great articals

The Northcascades Wanderer