The Airbag Issue (or debate, if you prefer) is back at WildSnow and I was unimpressed with the article as well as many of the comments. And now I will bore you with my ass talk.

A physician, Christopher Van Tilburg, is quoted in the article:

“My question was, are we misleading people thinking that they’re bringing the safest equipment when they may not be, for one,” Van Tilburg said. “And for two, avalanche transceivers do a horrible job at saving lives. They’re just not very effective at saving lives. I think people are misled.”

I would answer YES, we are misleading people as it is misleading to think that any of the equipment we bring into the mountains will actual make us safe. This will always be misleading in today’s environment where marketers make the promises.

Once again there is a tendency to want to solve a behavioural problem with a technological fix and I will argue that we should focus on “how we behave” in the mountains more than “what we bring” with us to the mountains. All kinds of reasons are given for why people do not use airbags, but I will not bother to discuss them here. I don’t care.

To let you know where I am coming from I will say that I was instructed in Winter Mountain Travel by certified Canadian Mountain Guides while doing my Undergraduate Degree in a program called Outdoor Pursuits at the University of Calgary. This was in the mid to late 80s and, at this time, there were no commercially available shovels so I made my own collapsible one. Probe poles were just becoming an idea, but we learned how to quickly bash the basket off a ski pole with a ski to then use it as a probe. My first Transceiver was an Ortovox F2, the first dual frequency transceiver on the market as back in those days there were two frequencies in use. Not once in my studies did we talk about these things being “safety’ devices, rather they were rescue tools or body retrieval tools depending on the state of the victim (alive or dead). No one was being mislead, we knew it was dangerous.

As this equipment was required for class, I didn’t question it, but we also always wanted to have gear that was multi-use and have others reasons to bring objects with us. We used our shovels to dig snow pits and snow shelters and our poles to ski with or probe the snow pack for layers and density. It was only the transceiver that was single use, but it was small and relatively light, so we brought them with us and we practiced with them a lot.

Now let’s look at the reasons why an Airbag should also be brought along (one more single-use item) according to the article.

Van Tilburg cites a study that used Dummies with or without an Airbag. The article is vague on many details but the study seems to have be performed in a scenario using the most survivable type of avalanche. As I have stated before “not all avalanches kill, but some will and an airbag will be of no use”. Not much is said about this, but we know a good deal of avalanche deaths are from trauma and not asphyxia.

So, they take a bunch of dummies and get them in avalanches. There are 5 dummies without airbags and 14 dummies with airbags (why 19 total, I don’t know). From the article:

“Of the 5 dummies without airbags, burial depth was a mean of 43 cm, and only 1 of 5 was visible from the surface. In contrast, of 14 dummies with airbags, burial depth was a mean of 15 cm, with all 14 visible from the surface. This study also found that among the 14 airbag dummies, the head was visible for all but 5 and the airway was less than 10 cm below the surface for all but 2.”

OK, this seems to show how great airbags work so let’s take a closer look to ensure we aren’t being mislead. I could ask why use the term “mean” when “average” would work in an article for laypersons, but this is beside the point.

Let’s look at the results. The dummies with No Airbags are buried on average about 43 centimetres deep. This may look bad to an American that doesn’t know metric but this is about 17 inches (or the distance to the floor from just below my knee). Not that deep and one Airbagless dummy was visible from the surface (20% of the total here) and 17 inches being the average burial depth this means at least 2 dummies were buried less than 17 inches deep.

I guess that if the scenario is to buy an Airbag and then do nothing when I get into an avalanche (just doing what the dummy would do) then maybe an Airbag would be a good option.

On the other hand is how I was instructed to act in the event of being taken in an avalanche:

First, be dam sure the slope you are skiing is either stable enough to mitigate the danger of trauma (it will not slide and take you over the cliff, into the trees or deposited in a terrain trap), or the run-out is such that a burial would not be that bad. This is all part of the Risk and Danger equation where probability and consequence are considered.

In my scenario one person is skiing and exposed to avalanche danger while at least one other person is watching from a safe position and is available to search for, and rescue the skier, in the event of a slide. Planned properly a skier caught in an avalanche like the ones in the study above would have pretty good chance of survival especially if they: eject their skis and poles, are wearing a decent size pack that remains in place (mine is a 50 litre stuffed lightly), swim for the surface and have knowledgeable ski partners to rescue them.
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Now let’s look at the real-life example from the article:

“Even though I’m on a big slope, I’m not feeling the size of the slope because I’m two ski lengths from my friends, standing in the woods,” said Nicholson. “It’s a big slope, but I’m just on the very edge of it. And I do all my measuring, how thick it is, all that kind of stuff. And I went to do a small slope test, so I stepped over the skin track and jumped to see if I got a crack above the skin track. Instead of a crack at my skis, it cracks like 50 feet above me. And releases.”

Again, we are not given all the pertinent details to really understand this situation. I will say that there is a big difference between those that ski for a living and those that ski for sport and that professionals don’t often get to decide what dangers they are expose to, so I’m not talking about what is best for them.

But what I want to know is “what was the danger rating that day?” and “was it known that a propagating layer was present in the snowpack?”

Because the only way to get an avalanche to release above you when you jump on the slope is for a propagating layer to release. So, instead of using this example to talk about what one could learn from this experience it is used as an example of how well Airbags work.

When I was instructed in safe Winter Travel, one of the first things we learned (and was pounded into our heads) was to know when you are in avalanche danger. Either in danger of starting a slide or being hit by one from above during a natural release (and in those days no one was skiing above you, there was no one else around period). This is where the idea of the ‘High Ground and Wide Ground” came from and what we strived for in our travels. To stay “high” was to be on terrain features where the slide paths were below you and “wide” was staying away from danger laterally or by staying well away from avalanche path run-outs. The “wide” ground is a more subtle understanding of terrain, where the difference between safe ground and dangerous ground can be inches. The best way to understand where this ground is, is to observe the edges of an avalanche slide path after an avalanche has occurred. There is often a distinct delineation between the dangerous ground and the safe ground. It is important to know here the line is and respect it.

So, instead of using this story to talk about safe travel and where to stop during periods of instability of the propagation variety, it is used as a sales pitch for Airbags.

The summation, titled “Hurdles” as in the hurdles involved in getting everyone to use an Airbag, establishes the position that it’s a done deal for the use of Airbags and no more discussion is necessary. And while I’ll be looked down upon by those that think their position is right, I will continue to advocate for more appropriate behaviour when it comes to skiing avalanche terrain as opposed to blindly buying and believing in technology to save the day when I screw up.

Finally there is this, from the article:

“Change is hard for people. Right?”, said Van Tilburg. “Change is hard for humans, so to change their dogma for people, to change their dogma from transceiver, shovel, probe to a transceiver, shovel, probe, and an airbag is just pure and simple difficult for humans.”

Yes, it is hard for people to change their behaviour or to stop with the “immediate gratification” our society has embraced and learn how to do an activity safely before heading out into dangerous situations. So instead of changing what we bring into the mountains I think more time and effort should be put on how to behave safely in the mountains. But, as there is no money in this for gear makers I doubt education will pushed as much as technology that promises more than it can ever deliver.

PS

And to the one commenter that said:

“But it’s worth it. Just ask the spouse, parent, or child of anyone who has deployed one and stayed on top.”

I would ask, “what do you say to the spouse, parent, or child of anyone who was wearing an Airbag, but died anyway?”