I don’t disagree with you, the problem is that people don’t get adequate avalanche training, and have very little idea how to navigate in avalanche terrain, much less disseminate an avalanche hazard report.

For me, I take at least one avi or ski mountaineering course a year and only travel with experienced backcountry skiers or split boarders. And once the season starts, it’s full on, skiing, planning missions, watching the weather, and having the patience to wait for the snowpack to consolidate after a storm , then checking/ recording snowpack observations as we move through the terrain.

People think that skiing in the back country is laid back, but it’s anything but. It’s about planning checking gear and waking up at ungodly hours in order to summit before the sun comes up and starts warming the snowpack. It’s about knowing when to back off and having a back up plan. It’s about respecting the slopes and getting home safe.

the fact is if you ski enough you will get caught in a slide at some point, or have to deal with an injury way out in the middle of no where, it’s about mitigating the hazard and knowing when to huck and when to take a granny line.

There is a steep couloir line that I have wanted to ski for about three years now and I have been up to it about 10 times and still have never skied it, because it’s exposed, and has no where to exit or stop.

Usually on these slopes we leap frog between islands of safety, but this line it has to be shredded top to bottom,it’s a no stopping steel legger, it’s so sexy, fast and dangerous it will be extremely rewarding when it hits.

Ski touring/ mountaineering is fucking awesome, it’s not a hobby and that’s the problem, people think it is something they can jump into every once in a while, it’s not. It’s a way of life during the winter.

As a backcountry skier one of the scariest things about avalanches is that they are almost completely silent. They can break trees and if you are skiing below, you would have no idea that it was coming for you unless you saw it.

Last year my group saw an avalanche and knew that there was a group in that area as we had left the parking lot at the same time and chatted with them.

They made it to the ridge and had lunch and dropped in, they were on the ski out, back to the parking lot when we ran into them. We had seen the slide, called search and rescue and started up towards the bottom of the slide expecting to be digging them out, but found them on the skin track.They were completely unaware that the slope they just skied had slide right behind them.

Apparently just as they were about to drop in a solo skier showed up at the top and skied the same line and triggered the Avi on top of them.

We all went back to the debris pile to try and find the solo skier and he was there, he was uninjured and looking for the skiers we were with. He definitely shit his pants though.

The avi had snapped trees that were probably 10 years old making this a particularly large one that had overlapped its historical path.

I would estimate it at a class three based on the volumn of snow in the debris pile.

The Avalanche was triggered in the alpine and this dude was lucky that he triggered it below himself, or he would have been dead, the scary part is all the skiers that went before skied the same line.

Back country skiing is a lot like playing mine sweeper, but if you hit a trigger the slope slides.