Avalanche!
If you decide to venture off-piste the minimum equipment that you should take is an avalanche transceiver, a shovel and a probe. It's important that everyone in the group not only has this equipment but also knows how to use it. If you are in any doubt about the terrain that you want to ski on, ask a piste patroller or better still, take a local off-piste guide.
Mad Dog Ski has teamed up with
HATadventures (the on snow programme from Henry's Avalanche Talk) to publish weekly snow and weather advice aimed at the off-piste skier in the upper Tarentaise valley around Val d'Isere, Tignes, Les Arcs, Sainte Foy and La Plagne.
HAT Adventures explains how you should be reading the avalanche warning system used by lift companies...
How to read avalanche warnings: The official avalanche safety report recognises the importance of the additional weight of a skier acting to trigger a release. The bulletin helps you by defining the risk level and highlighting where the risks are at their greatest. Here you will see the focus on the risk of triggering a release. This risk factor is a primary source of information about where to go and where to be safe and where to the risks are greatest. This scale is frequently misunderstood as a scale that tells you the risk level high medium or low and whether or not you should go.
How you should be reading it:We have developed an alternative to the bar talk version described above. This focuses on how you should think about the risks.
Level 1 - few if any avalanches likely - a bit of struggle to find much good off piste, maybe go randonee or stay on the pistes.
Level 2 - the off-piste snow will avalanche and release under the weight of skier in some places (but not many).
Level 3 - the snow pack will release in quite a few places especially on wind slab. The risks are now quite material.
Level 4 - it is likely you will see natural avalanches, the snow pack can release on all slopes above 25 degrees and on all slope aspects. Be extremely cautious about steeper slopes.
Level 5 - it is avalanching as you read the report! ask the pisteurs before you go anywhere.
How
not to read it:
Here is an example of the "bar talk" version of the risk scale. This is not how we look at it, but is how some people see it.
Level 1 - Zero risk but stay in the bar it is not worth skiing
Level 2 - Low risk, it is OK to go off piste
Level 3 - Medium risk here and there but off-piste is OK
Level 4 - Quite high risk - so be careful
Level 5 - Very high risk
The correct way is look at the description offered by the resort, to read the safety bulletin and start to think intelligently about the risks, the slope angle, the time of day and the general stability of the snow pack.
An over simplistic or a too complacent approach to reading the scale has led to a simple statistic. There are disproportionately more accidents happening on level 2 risk days than for any of the other level of risk. This is likely to be because this level is read as "low risk". Level 2 is not low risk it really means the risk is confined to fewer places.
For more information on skiing off-piste, see
www.skioffpiste.co.uk.
