Risks
Sun Aug 10 2025 17:00:00 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)
Assessing Risk
Proper risk assessment is one of the most important skills to develop for backcountry sports. It’s wise to take time to assess your risks before an expedition, at the start of the trip, any time the terrain or conditions change, and review your good and bad decisions at the end.
The Incomplete Hazard Scale
The hazard scale is often shown with two axis’s: probability and consequence. The skiing industry uses this scale a lot for assessing avalanche risk. Take a high probability slide with low consequences like some powdery sluffs during a light snowfall and assign a lower hazard rating. Take a medium probability slide with bad consequences like a windslab created after a storm and assign it a medium to high hazard rating. Stuff like that works for industry, but for individuals moving through continuous complex terrain a new axis appears: unknown. The more unknowns there are in a journey the more hazardous it becomes. Every turn around the bend, every day that passes could bring a new hazard that you never conceived as possible. This can come as terrain changes such as rockfall and avalanche, unstable ground, and entrapment. It could also come from inexperience with equipment and conditions such as being underdressed for extreme cold or unprepared to fix a broken stove. Assume that anything that can go wrong will go wrong and plan for contingencies. Always remember that small accidents in truly remote wilderness can be a much bigger deal = higher consequence.
Determining Unknowns
Sometimes you can’t determine unknowns. But many you can buy simply testing yourself in the conditions with the equipment you are expecting to use. This will work out many of these kinks. Some unknowns persist or aren’t tested for if you don’t know about them. For example, many people won’t take apart their stove and make sure they know how to fix it if it stops working. This is the kind of thing you could find in a full mental sweep of your expedition. Go through every step of the plan. What could break? What could go wrong. Test these out. Unknowns on the expedition can be tested in similar ways. Just as test slopes can be used to assess avalanche terrain, you can poke around through unknown terrain or situations before committing to a track. Always take the time to double check a few options. Often there’s a much safer river crossing just around the bend, etc.
Stopping to assess
Any time that terrain makes a substantial change it’s wise to check in with the group and make an assessment of the route and options and risks. It’s way too easy to get in the zone and move straight from one type of terrain to another more hazardous type without doing a proper team check. Stop and assess whenever the weather changes too. This can be hard to key into when it’s a gradual transition, but it’s exceptionally important for avalanche assessment for skiing and other terrain that is adversely affected by the conditions. This doesn’t have to be an overdone conversation. Most terrain changes can be a simple point and nod. More complex ones might look like a quick back and forth chat between team members. “Okay we’re heading onto the glacier now I think the safest route is up through there. What do you all think?” Start with an open ended question rather than a statement or a yes or no question so that you don’t stifle someone if they think there’s a better solution.
Heuristics
Heuristics is a branch of psychology that focuses on errors in judgment and assumptions that we tend to make because our minds like to take shortcuts. Things like: “well other people make that mistake cause they’re dumb and inexperienced but I wouldn’t do that” or “well the leader knows more than me and says it’s okay so I guess it’s fine even though I’m spooked.” I’m not going to bother unpacking this topic completely here. Read a book or watch some videos on it. This is how every single accident or close call I’ve been a part of or witnessed has been the result of a mistake based on heuristics. If you take one thing away it’d be this: always double check, never trust anyone including yourself, always pause to give yourself time to make a decision, when in doubt make a conservative and safe decision.