Avalanche Awareness

What comes to mind first when you think of ‘avalanche awareness’? Is it taking a training course? Perhaps it’s making sure you have avalanche rescue equipment and know-how to use it. Or, is it checking the New Zealand Avalanche Advisory (NZAA) to find your region’s avalanche forecast? They’re all correct answers!

- Mountain Safety Council

Getting the training, having (and knowing how to use) the gear, and checking the forecast are the three essential steps to ensuring you are prepared to head into the backcountry, whether you are ski-touring, mountaineering, ice climbing, or tackling a winter tramping trip.

But is that it, if you tick those boxes are you good to go? Short answer is, you’re on the right path, but as you probably expected there is more to it. There are the more critical parts of the process that require deeper thought and consideration, and they probably don’t come to mind quite as readily as they should.

Critical thinking and risk management requires asking ourselves the more challenging questions, like ’what does this forecast mean for my route?’, ’what time of day am I going to be in that avalanche terrain and what will that mean?’, and even something as simple as, ‘does this trip make sense right now?’ Your group’s skill level and whether everyone’s goals are aligned also needs to be considered.

These considerations are the soft skills you learn about during an avalanche course, but they can’t be left there, they need to be transferred into real-life situations. Critical thinking and risk management are essential tools (and skills) that belong on every trip, just like your skins or your crampons, and they should be taken out and used just as often.

At the New Zealand Mountain Safety Council (MSC) we do a huge amount of work compiling and analyzing outdoor recreation data in order to gain insights into what incidents are occurring and why.