-Roger Atkins, Canadian Ski Guide, Avalanche Expert, Author
Photo: Sean Zimmerman-Wall
Almost every avalanche accident involves a poor decision made by a human.
More specifically, it is a member of the party involved in the accident that triggers the avalanche that results in injury or death (Avalanche Canada, 2018; Klassen et al., 2013). Most of the time, avalanche accidents aren’t just something that happen to us, they happen because of us. Recent years of research has yielded provocative insight into how we make decisions in the backcountry and how errors in perception led to accidents. This insight provides us with the ability to identify these human factors and correct them before an accident occurs. These errors are commonly the result of victims under utilizing the information available to them while making critical decisions in the backcountry (Arnott, 1998).
Even those of us with a high level of education and experience are prone to errors, especially when operating in the presence of human factors, unusual conditions, and within an arena that provides meager feedback. All of these elements are prevalent in winter mountain environments. Consider for a moment how challenging it truly is to gain expertise in this area. Avalanches are most frequent only half the year meaning your window of opportunity to interact, observe, and learn from them is short. They only provide feedback when they actually occur which means that avalanches NOT occurring IS NOT quality feedback. Finally, the medium is constantly changing. If our perceptions and decision-making skills are based on our understanding of patterns and cause and effect, what does it mean if we are not sure if we are ever getting quality feedback?
Humans have evolved complex cognitive ways to take in and process the large and constant stream of information we receive from the world around us. Additionally, humans are social beings. How we interact with others and our need at some level to “fit in” is a powerful (and generally unconscious) driver of our behavior. We call these cognitive and social aspects that influence our behavior and ultimately our decision-making human factors.
Your previous avalanche education, coupled with the tacit knowledge of how you and your colleagues interact, has undoubtedly shaped how you engage avalanche terrain. At some point in your journey, you have been exposed to a laundry list of these human factors, and we aren’t going to recount them here. Instead, we are going to dive into how to utilize these factors for good.
The fields of social science and behavioral psychology have forced avalanche practitioners to think about more than the nuances of crystal morphology, fracture mechanics, and risk management frameworks. Research into how we make decisions has become a focal point at regional and international workshops, podcasts, and articles in both mainstream media and industry publications. To be a good contributor to a team in the context of an avalanche forecasting operation, it helps to have an understanding of human behavior and decision making, but you need not obtain a Phd. In the by-now renowned book Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman, the author focuses on how we utilize two distinct processes, often referred to as automatic (fast) and reflective (slow), to go about our daily lives. These physiologically distinct processes involve different parts of the brain and different biochemistry.
Photo: Amy David
Building on these efforts, an avalanche practitioner and alacritous thinker by the name of Roger Atkins developed a concept that we could more strategically prime our automatic thinking process by deliberately choosing a “mindset” before going out the door each day. His original concept, published in an ISSW paper from 2014 under the title of Yin, Yang, and You, has been highly lauded and expanded upon by others in our field.
Atkins delivers a compelling argument that this is a multi-faceted approach that can ultimately help guide our decisions towards correct actions that align with present conditions. He notes that an initial step in this process is augmenting what he calls “a selection of desires.” Desires underlie our decisions and are often difficult to combat if we focus on too narrow a set. An example he gives is that a desire to ride steep and deep powder will ultimately guide one towards doing so, and that in some circumstances that is totally permissible, but in others the result could be catastrophic. This is but one of many desires that avalanche practitioners may select from and he lists several more in his paper.
The concept of adopting a mindset, or a fixed mental attitude or disposition that predetermines a person's responses to and interpretations of situations, isn’t foreign to us as humans (Atkins 2014). We do it every day in our activities. He illustrates that we can be strategic about it by selecting from a list of pre-determined mindsets that are defined by typical conditions and operational strategies. This list has become the stuff of lore within our industry and is still being argued about and mulled over in meetings, bars, and locker rooms the world over.
Atkins 2014
Strategic Mindsets can serve as a baseline for us to utilize as we complete the hazard and risk assessment process and begin to discuss how we are going to treat the risk through mitigation. The following list has been adapted from Atkins by the InfoEx Working Group at the Canadian Avalanche Association.
Snow Avalanche Risk Management Framework. Adapted from Technical Aspects of Snow Avalanche Risk Management─Resources and Guidelines for Avalanche Practitioners in Canada (C. Campbell, S. Conger, B. Gould, P. Haegeli, B.Jamieson, & G. Statham Eds.). Revelstoke, BC, Canada: Canadian Avalanche Association 2016.
Strategic Mindsets. Adapted from "International Info Ex Version v3.72.0" by InfoEx Working Group after Atkins 2014. Retrieved 20211020 from https://international-infoex.avalancheassociation.ca. © 2021 CAA