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If you’re going to stop mid-run to snap a photo of your buds, makes sure you’re well out of harm’s way. Photo: Gary Smith
Exploring the virtues of skiing OAT
Consider dating. Should you explore a relationship with one person, or play the field? How about your handheld. Do you layer multiple apps until the battery spurts flame and you get the latest version of electronic death? Or do you keep it simple, only a few things running at once? Some would say your style of dating is less important than crashing your computer while buying socks on Amazon. In either case, personal or digital, too many things at once might lead to easily avoided pain, or at least, suffering.
When it comes to “multiples,” perhaps avalanche safety is an easier issue to parse than romance and phones. In my view, the gold standard in avy safety is exposing one person at a time to hazard, “OAT” for short. Funny how often the treasure is ignored. For reasons both bad and good.
On the one hand, “ski one at a time” makes perfect sense. On the other hand, any rule involving human nature interacting with natural forces can be sophomoric or perhaps even dated. For example, in the ancient past of extreme skiing we had a “rule” that said “climb it first.” That adage could still save some lives. But steep powder skiing is now common, and climbing straight into the throat of a snow loaded beast can be unwise, if not foolhardy. Likewise, many modern extreme ski routes are not practicable as climbs, even with firm snow conditions.
So, back to “ski one at a time.” What does OAT really mean (besides the breakfast you hastily slurp as you race out the door to go skiing)? What are the pros, cons, and considerations related to skiing OAT?
1. It falls upon my keyboard to begin with a definition. In avalanche terrain, when a group agrees to ski a run “one at a time,” the exact meaning is that only one person in the group, at any given moment, is exposed to avalanche danger (on the uphill or down).
2. Item 1 above does _not_ mean standing in the middle of a slide path, snapping photos of your buddy’s face shots, thinking “if it slides, I’ll just ski to the side…” Instead, OAT means each person runs out the entire pitch, one-hundred-percent, from one entirely safe zone to another.
3. Aha, “safe zones,” or “islands of safety.” What are they? Year after year, like the beat of Marie Laveau’s spooky bijou tomtom, the reports roll in. Too often, skiers hang at what they perceive as an island of safety — and a big avalanche overruns their archipelago like a Class 5 hurricane. These tragic events show that identifying truly safe zones is as important as identifying avalanche slopes, and yes, it’s the same thing.
The most common unsafe safe zone is the small island of trees you’re “pretty sure is safe, because otherwise they wouldn’t be there!?” Second to that, the side of the avalanche path — where did that myth come from? Also watch for the common noob mistake of simply not stopping far enough beyond the runout zone. See our alpha angle post for more about determining how far a slide can slide.
4. “But I watched a guide ski down with three clients at once!” Why? Most often money is the reason. While a group of three is perhaps the ideal, the economic reality of guiding is that more than two clients per trip might be necessary. Separating a larger group and skiing OAT causes major time issues. Say you have a guided group of six, and skiing something OAT requires eight minutes each (hey, the clients are not auditioning for Matchstick). Just that one section adds an hour to the day! Guide tries to do OAT, clients enjoy happy hour in snow cave.
5. Cons to OAT? The biggie: Consider a nautical analogy. Man overboard. Your throw rope isn’t long enough, no rescue swimmers are in the water, and you’re too tired to dive. Shift the thought experiment to ski touring. You’re on a 2,000 vertical foot run you ski top-to-bottom OAT, the last person down is injured, or caught in a slide that doesn’t run full path. You are exhausted, weather is looming, sunset is dropping like a theater curtain. Apply skins, climb, hope your headlamp has fresh batteries and the inReach is working.
6. Excuses to avoid OAT are many. Some in the nature of heuristics, some involving group dynamics, some just plain whacked: “I took a Level 3 course and I tell you this will never slide,” or “We don’t have time,” or “Bill isn’t a good skier, someone should pair up with him,” or “Come-on, just once let’s gang ski and make a video,” or “To save time, just count to 30 then launch after me.” And then what might be the clear winner of the Darwin award: “We all have airbags!”
Commenters, can you think of a few other memorable incantations?
7. And, worthy of its own spot on the listicle, we have no-OAT excuse number 672: “We have radios and we ski REALLY FAST.” That’s like a barn cat scattering a family of mice. At least one is sacrificed to appease the feline predator. Works with cats I guess. Avalanches just keep rolling — they hunger not for meat, but for souls.
8. How do dogs change the picture? To avoid incurring the wrath of our valued pet owning readers, please ladies and gentleman, have at it in the comments. If you’re OAT skiing with the care of a pathology lab technician, how does Fido the Wonder Dog fit in?
9. This is where I get to equivocate. Yes Sir, there are times in the grumpy old mountains when they want you to move, get out, charge home fast, because: the snow is warming so it’s better to get everybody off the slope NOW; rockfall is due to increase because of sun hit; you can see the blank wall of a whiteout headed your way like an apocalyptic desert sandstorm. Fill in the blank. (At least for some of us, isn’t figuring this stuff out part of the appeal?)
10. To sum up:
— OAT is not a made-up rule curmudgeons spout off to ruin the fun, it is real.
— Smaller groups might be the most important key to skiing one-at-a-time.
— If you ski with a guide who does not OAT, watch out for your own behind. You should be comfortable the guide has a darn good reason for keeping everyone in lockstep.
— Beware group dynamics such as the expert halo: “Dude, this thing could never slide!”
— Safe zones and islands need to be 100% reliable.
— Consider skier skills and gear issues. Stronger skiers go last to help the less fortunate who might be stranded in the middle of your big mountain descent.
20 comments
oat isn’t only about one person exposed to danger at a time, it’s also about the bare minimum of weight stressing a potential starting zone at one time.
oat doesn’t just make you safer IF it slides, it makes a slide less likely to happen in the first place.
OAT is also not only for the down. I appreciate the caveats you present above. There are legitimate reasons for conscious adaptation of compliance to certain situations. And on the up as well. In route finding, as well as consideration of runout distances (or failure thereof), I have noticed a recent trend of experienced groups–even in avalanche courses where we have seen tragic consequences–bunching close together when skiing up or traveling through avalanche terrain. While adhering to a true OAT all the time creates significant time issues, being spread out exposes fewer people to the hazard and as Buck says, places less stress on the slope. Communication being a hallmark of leadership and harbinger of safe travel, I make conscious efforts to advise my partners when I think we want to start spreading out more. It’s not just when crossing obvious avalanche paths OAT but also when skinning up the margins of avalanche terrain. I see a spectrum of smart spacing behaviors from flat approaches through ascending near to obvious paths, all the way to crossing highly suspect, known paths as an application of mindfulness. Staying safe is an exercise in decision making at a wide range of scales. We ignore the micro scales and appropriate, associated protocols at our peril.
For sure, applies to the up as well. I focused on the down because that’s where I’ve seen the most consistently risky behavior in terms of OAT. Where I’ve seen the worst on the up is in Europe. North Americans bunch up on the uphill as well, but not so much as the Europeans. It’a cultural thing, in my opinion. Lou
Good stuff, Lou. Regarding your comments about guides succumbing to the temptation to violate the OAT rule to get more runs in a day, I feel the need to give a shout-out to the good folks at Silverton Mountain. Over many years of skiing there with numerous guides, I have to say that they enforce OAT pretty darn well. For a lot of people, Silverton is their first exposure to “Wild Snow”, so it’s good to see there guides setting a good example….even if it means you only get in 4 or 5 runs.
Rob, that is excellent. Good on those guys. Too many opposite stories out there… Lou
I agree on all counts with the points raised in the article and comments, but, man-oh-man, IMO finding a “safe zone” where you can still keep an eye on your partner(s) is nearly impossible at many of my local spots. How do you folks balance that?
Every run is different of course and you have to guess the types of slides it could produce with the evidence on the run if you don’t have decades of history with a place. On a long run with a few benches where your partner could come to a stop before the bottom, are there any large trees along the sides of the path?. You can wear a harness and preferably a chest harness too, stop below a stout tree and have a 10-12ft. line attached to your harness and coiled in your pocket with a carabiner so you can whip it around a tree quickly. It could be the difference between being dragged in, so long as you are not in a place where you wont be steamrolled by a big slide. Sooner or later, you’ll probably get surprised.
Radios, and compromise, and figuring OAT is just a tool, sometimes doesn’t work… Lou
OAT on the up is a troublesome issue. On some of the open terrain around here (Austrian Alps) you might wait an hour or more for a single person to get out of the danger area. (Kristallscharte in Italy….3 or 4 if they are not super-fit.) Lou is spot on about the bunching in Europe….but with 300 people pounding a slope on some days and in some places, there is no way around it. Of course, you could always go somewhere else….which is the right choice in 90% of those situations.
Really – its things like this that make me love low-angle, low consequence ski touring as well as hot-lapping some easy pitch no one else even looks at. One that has never slid and never will. (I know….thats a lot of never….but thats the kinds of stuff I’m talking about.) I do laps behind the house that are so short I can still participate in conversations happening on the porch while skinning up. And drink beer.
a small note from european guy > very basic principle to keep alive in mountains > stay always attached by friendship and carefulness but stay always detached {when/where appropriate} physically, i.e. do not share rope, do not stand on same icy plate or flushy/powder pillow or too close near the cornice etc. detached does not mean too far, just in secure place, to be able to help fast if needed. detached depends on the range, conditions, weather. you decide in complexity, and that is also how results come in, though we might not see them so complex at first sight.
by ski down a narrow couloir, not only the avalanche is the risk…the skier himself is a rumbling groomer in incidental/accidental fall. skis are like arrows, get to speed, and their momentum can kill. there are certainly stories everyone has heard of a ski going thru someone’s body….that is why brakes were invented for resort skiing. most experienced one goes as last one {safety rule, to organize rescue if necessary}, but he tells the foregoers about all risks and how to avoid them. that is how magic in mountains works > sharing experience, practice. and for the business level of guiding and security > you cannot buy/guarantee yourself a secure feeling by just hanging onto a UIAGM guide. you have to adjust to conditions, together, and be more of a team than just a guide and a client. of course guide carries the experience into this relationship, but must be wisely also used in that moment when needed.
for nature cannot be fooled {saying by Feynman}.
OAT also preserves resources if your group does have an accident. It’s much easier for two people to find one buried person than one person to find two.
I may be the odd one but I preferred to keep clients well-spaced from the trailhead and back whether we were in avalanche terrain or not. Do it all the time, not some of the time. It allowed me to watch and observe who gets it or not, thus corrections can be made before skiing into complicated terrain and we can run some simple scenarios beforehand in less consequential terrain if need be.
As far as safe spots in complicated terrain, some times there are no safe spots so you just have choose the “safest spot”.
I am really enjoying this conversation. Nice job, Lou, getting us started with an excellent and appropriate set of guidelines.
I’ve been known to tell a student that this was an “imaginary safe zone.” Ha ha he never forgot that.
Also helpful in this list might be the concept of “leap-frogging,” where we tuck one observer, ideally with a radio, in a place that can hold 1, and have everyone ski “through” or past them all the way beyond the end of the shot.
Finding a safe zone is an art, not a science. I try to always ask myself, soon after skiing it, “was that the right place to stop for this path and this avalanche problem?” Even if I say YES, it’s a productive query.
Nice article to get people thinking as we get stoked for the season. I’m going to repeat your definition for OAT again here. I think it’s important: “one at a time,” the exact meaning is that only one person in the group, at any given moment, is exposed to avalanche danger (on the uphill or down).
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard someone say “let’s ski this one at a time, so wait about 30 seconds, (or five turns, or 150 feet) then drop in behind me”, I’d have a big stack of dollars. I’d also have a big stack of dollars if I got one for every time I’ve seen groups bunch up like the La Grave Pulse while skinning, only to become really concerned about spacing on the way down.
I’m not going to tell anyone they should/shouldn’t ski something one at a time, but if that’s your decision, make sure you actually do it!
Skiing solo is the purest OAT! And, arguably, it’s safer than skiing with a bunch of knuckleheads. No distraction, no showing off.
Bunching is a huge problem in the Wasatch, along with the new mentality of group skiing. Today’s BC mentality is to go in massive groups, which adds another element of danger. Back in the good ole ‘70’s or ‘80’s, when parking wasn’t a Fight Club event, small groups were almost a rule. Now, skiing Main Days, Birthday Chutes, Cardiac, etc, etc, etc, would take all day if OAT was followed. I’ve seen screaming-matches when the ‘A-group’ starts their descent above the ‘B-group’ who somehow believes everyone should wait for their ascent, which, given the continual stream of humanity, means the ‘A-group’ must wait all day until all is clear. Big groups do bring a party atmosphere, but BC skiing isn’t PAC12 football. Go small, be nice, don’t ski like a SLC commuter, or just don’t go.
OAT is one tool in the quiver of TERRAIN MANAGEMENT, not Snow Management. We can’t manage the snowpack, it simply exists. There are far too many variables, snowfall intensities, localized wind patterns, sun hit, old ski tracks, buried logs and rocks, etc to be able to make any truly educated decision on how likely a given slope will slide. People throw out OAT or other travel techniques (that are often misused) as an attempt to rationalize the danger of triggering a slid, but in reality the only way to minimize the risk is to ski low consequence terrain.
Over the course of my 20 years of SAR, avalanche education and guiding I have seen an overall shift in backcountry behavior. It used to be more poking around on the margins and getting the goods “when conditions are good.” Now it seems like big consequential terrain gets skied almost daily as a matter of course. On one hand, it seems that snow is overall more stable then we once thought, on the other we are still no closer to truly determining the safety of a given slope. And all the airbags, avalungs and rescue equipment in the world can’t protect you from potential consequences of being in a slide.
Jon, interesting you should mention the snow seeming to be more overall stable. I agree, and having about a half a century to observe that I can say my scope is pretty good. It’s not a huge difference IMHO, and probably has not occurred everywhere, but it is there. What is the why? I’d offer a few things. However subtle, ski compaction makes a difference. But more, the simple fact of multiple groups going after the same terrain causes a statistical change, in that while the first few groups might be at “average” risk, once you get to, for example, group 12, the risk usually goes way down. I’d also offer climate change. Warmer weather on average results in a more compact, bonded, and stable snowpack. Global warming, on average, perhaps reduces avalanche danger. And, serious joking, if there is no snow, global warming most certainly reduces avalanche danger, ha ha! Thoughts to ponder, anyway. Lou
Nice article, Lou. I like the leapfrog technique that Lynne brought up too. I find it especially helpful in chutes with doglegs or long runs with limited visibility top to bottom. Radios are certainly the best option, but the middle “frogger” can also use arm/pole signals to pass simple pre-set messages to those above (vertical is “all clear/go,” horizontal is “wait.”) Choosing a specific safe zone as a group at the top of a run avoids miscommunications while still in avalanche terrain, such as lead skier wallowing in the flats because they didn’t carry enough speed to clear the runout zone. This increases exposure time and decreases the whole group’s daylight ski time!
T to B. Bueno-Bye.
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