Why? Well I haven’t posted in a while and I was wondering how to do it so this is another off-the-cuff post on ski related stuff.
The ski world right now is all over the new Black Diamond Airbag with one big ski blogger practically gushing about “disruptive” products (whatever) and an ad for an ABS airbag featuring a Spanish “pro”skier being saved by the airbag he was wearing. This has spawned a lot of talk on the ski forums and has made me think. I will now make some wildly subjective and speculative platitudes on the subject. Enjoy!
Again with this ABS circus I have heard things like “we didn’t expect … “. What? For fuck sake it was absolutely puking in the Pyrénées with a foot of new snow in the previous 24 hours. Obviously this “pro” (people always mix up “professional” and “expert” with a professional simply being one who is paid to do something) knew what was happening with the snow pack so my question is “did having the airbag alter his behaviour?” To me this is what it’s all about – behaviour. You hear people exclaim “wearing a seatbelt doesn’t make me a reckless driver and wearing an airbag won’t make me a reckless skier”. Really? Because in my opinion that “pro” was being reckless when you consider the avalanche danger and I’m willing to speculate that having the airbag didn’t only alter his decision making in terms of just being on that slope (totally unexpected – what?) but it altered his behaviour once he was in the shit (instead of trying to stay above it and may be break right he tries to outrun it – bad idea on a slope that is coming apart AHEAD of you).
Anyway you need to look at objects (technology) on a one-on-one basis to really understand their impact on an individual. Sure I ski with a beacon and it was on of the first items I purchased when I started going into the backcountry. I soon added a shovel I made and years later a probe pole. Does this stuff “alter my behaviour”? I don’t think that much as I know that this technology won’t do anything to change the avalanche danger. Avalanche danger is independent to whatever I do and I have always thought of this stuff as last ditch potential to maybe modify the outcome of an event if mistakes were made (or make body retrieval easier). The mistake being skiing a slope that you should have know better than to ski that day. Well I have now heard airbags being considered the type of device that is like “the last ditch effort if mistakes are made”. But when you ignore all the evidence and still ski the slope is it really a mistake?
Types of technology: I like to think of my gear in terms of what it can do for me. Think about finding yourself on blue Ice while skinning across a slope. With ski/skin technology on my feet I wouldn’t feel that secure. If I put on crampons, however, the blue ice doesn’t just become a secure medium it becomes a highway for fast travel. In this case the crampons change the situation from being somewhat desperate (risk of slipping and falling is high) to being pretty mundane (risk of slipping is practically nil). The crampons “mitigate” the risk of slipping. To say that an airbag “mitigates” avalanche risk is just not accurate. What it may (or may not) do is to change the outcome of being in an avalanche but it does nothing about the risk of avalanche. Nothing at all.
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When I think about how technology can change behaviour I always think about days playing classic Canadian shinny. This is basically hockey played with THE minimum of technical gear possible. In this case skates and a stick (and a puck). The true game of shinny is one of fluid speed where you are only as good as your last pass (hitting the post was how you scored but a pretty pass that results in a goal is soooo much better). Anyway there would always be some guys (and we payed with anyone but it was always guys) that showed up with shin pad, gloves and a helmet. I usually left before the carnage started as these guys had no problem with raising the puck or their stick and while they didn’t get injured, they surely caused injury. So is the solution to armour everyone (how’s that working out in pro football and hockey) or to go back to proper shinny. Answer this however you want.
Other points to make some other time.
“avalanches do and can happen anywhere”