Bruce Trempers's Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain is an excellent book. I saw this book in a ski shop at the beginning of the season and thought, "I should read this book." But I'm cheap and somewhat lazy when it comes to learning about avalanches, and the thought of reading a technical book about avalanches and how to survive them made me think of root canal surgery. So I put the book down and bought something a lot more fun: new skis.

Avanlanche, Red Mountain Pass

I am an avid backcountry skier and have been since 1976. I've skied extensively in Colorado, the Teton area of Wyoming, the Wasatch Range in Utah, and the Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia. And I do a lot of my skiing in prime avalanche terrain: open bowls between 30-40 degrees. In all that time, I've never been caught in an avalanche. I've never set off a significant avalanche. And only a few times have I seen someone else set off an avalanche. But NEVER have I seen a skier swept down and buried by an avalanche. Of course, I've heard about people getting caught and killed in avalanches.

But it seemed to me that whatever I was doing must be right because I'd never been caught. According to Tremper, this kind of thinking is one of the many logical fallacies of avalanches. Tremper says that most people overestimate their avalanche awareness skills:

I think one of the major contributing factors is known as 'positive reinforcement.' This means that you go out into avalanche terrain, nothing happens. You go out again, nothing. You go out again and again and again: still nothing happens. Yes, there's nothing like success! But here's the critical fact: snow is stable about 95 percent of the time.

In other words: if you don't know a lot about avalanches and you haven't been caught, you're just lucky. It's only a matter of time. And if you're a male under 40, look out. According to Tremper, out of 215 U S avalanche fatalities between 1990-2000, 93% of the victims were male. And out of 447 U S avalanche fatalities between 1950-2000, the age group with the most fatalities was males between 18-40.

That's the bad news, as Tremper likes to say. The good news is that you can do something about it. At the minimum, READ THIS BOOK. Even better, take some avalanche classes.

Tremper's book is easy and fun to read. No kidding. His writing keeps your attention and is easy to understand. He makes complex snow science easy to understand with clear, concise text, spot-on analogies, and excellent pictures, graphs, and diagrams. If you want to learn all aspects of avalanche safety--how avalanches work, weather, snowpack analysis, snow stability tests, hazard evaluation, routefinding and safe travel rituals, rescue, and the all-important "Human Factor"--you can find it in Bruce Tremper's most excellent Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain.

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