"Shit happens."

[Lone Star]

When something bad happens to our friends, "shit happens." When something bad happens to a stranger, we're more likely to go to the other end of the spectrum: "What a moron."

It turns out that shit especially happens to people who make bad decisions. And it turns out that the smartest, savviest, nicest people in the world make bad decisions.

So why, as friends, can't we honor the lives of the fallen by showing others how to avoid making the same bad decisions? What good do we do by chalking tragedy up to nothing more than incredibly bad luck?


Sarah Burke = shit happens. Jamie Pierre = stupid decisions. There's a difference.

If the smartest, savviest, nicest people in the world get lured into making horrible decisions, how do I prevent myself from doing the same thing?

[spanghew]

I recommend mute testimony.

[systemoverblow'd]

When something bad happens to our friends, "shit happens." When something bad happens to a stranger, we're more likely to go to the other end of the spectrum: "What a moron."

It turns out that shit especially happens to people who make bad decisions. And it turns out that the smartest, savviest, nicest people in the world make bad decisions.

So why, as friends, can't we honor the lives of the fallen by showing others how to avoid making the same bad decisions? What good do we do by chalking tragedy up to nothing more than incredibly bad luck?


Sarah Burke = shit happens. Jamie Pierre = stupid decisions. There's a difference.

If the smartest, savviest, nicest people in the world get lured into making horrible decisions, how do I prevent myself from doing the same thing?

WTF are you talking about? I don't know anyone who thinks this way. Jesus you must be a gigantic cunt.

[sfotex]

So why, as friends, can't we honor the lives of the fallen by showing others how to avoid making the same bad decisions? What good do we do by chalking tragedy up to nothing more than incredibly bad luck?

It's all about the timing, 'shit happens' is a coping mechanism.

[systemoverblow'd]

Let me explain because some of you won't understand my cunt statement.

It is YOU and your moronic friends perception of these fatalities that are suspect. It's very telling that you think Jamie made bad choices and Sarah just happened to have bad luck. If Jamie happened to die hucking his meat off the 255'er I would agree, but he didn't.

Sarah threw herself intentionally 35'+ above what is essentially a concrete surface 30 or more times a day hoping to make that transition while spinning and going inverted. Do you think that is a great decision?

Everyone kisses Shane's ass because he was awesome. You never hear people talking about him making bad decisions because of who he was. It's fucking Shane. But guess what... it's only a matter of time when you live his life before you bite it. Poor decisions you say? It wasn't a choice, it was a way of life.

And of those 3 I listed above, I would say Sarah made the poorest decisions of them all. It amazes me we don't have more dead or paralyzed pipe riders. But mark my words, with how huge people are going nowadays, its only a matter of time.

So after reading this stupid rant of mine only one thing can be sure... It's your stupid mind that is saying something is tragic while the same is not because your perception of how they lived their life. And it seems, you have it completely backwards to boot.

[Lone Star]

While you make some great points about the dangers of the park, I put this post in the slide zone because:

1) A substantial number of avalanche accidents happen to people who probably should have known better than to be in certain terrain in certain conditions

2) These people are people I would consider smarter and more able to make good decisions than I can. How do *I* expect to be able to avoid falling into a similar trap?

[dos bolsas]

repost:
http://explore-mag.com/2831/adventur...grand-delusion

that said, resort skiers and suburbanites will always have their take on things.

[sfotex]

While you make some great points about the dangers of the park,

Objective vs. subjective dangers....


re: http://explore-mag.com/2831/adventur...grand-delusion
Funny thing is the 2 climbing friends I've lost died driving home afte climbing....

[systemoverblow'd]

repost:
http://explore-mag.com/2831/adventur...grand-delusion

that said, resort skiers and suburbanites will always have their take on things.

And your point is? My only qualm with the OP was how he chose to perceive the deaths of great athletes.

He said people perceive others dieing in certain ways due to how try live their lives. My point was we all take risks and some of us, even though not thought as "bad", on a much more routine basis. If you think about it Shawn White takes bigger risks over the course of a year than Jeremy Jones. I probably take bigger risks daily when I kill my liver with alcohol.

[TBS]

Good thread Lone Star. It's a tough problem to deal with. The terminally sketchy conditions this year seem to provide constant reminders of the Human Factors we all talk about.

I don't think there's a direct correlation between knowledge and bad outcomes. Ultimately, everybody has their own risk-reward criteria, and the assessment of that trade-off varies every day. The longer people go without a Pow Fix, the more risk they seem to take.

Which is a problem because study after study show that we humans are horrible at assessing low probability, high consequence risk.

Tremper provides a great perspective

I’m not sure what it is about avalanches, but people invariably overestimate their skills. This doesn’t happen with, say, accounting or physics or gardening, so what is it with avalanches? Maybe we can chalk it up to a man-thing. Maybe it’s like grizzly bears or hunting or starting a fire in the woods. We puff up our chests, tell our lies, and would literally rather die than admit our ineptitude. This would explain why 93 percent of avalanche fatalities are men and only 7 percent women. It’s perhaps not a coincidence that these are the same percentages as males to females in the U.S. prison population.

I think one of the major contributing factors is known as “positive reinforcement.” You go out into avalanche terrain, nothing happens. You go out again, nothing happens. You go out again and again and again; still no avalanches. Yes, there’s nothing like success! But here’s the critical fact: from my experience, any particular avalanche slope is stable 95 percent of the time. So if you know absolutely nothing about avalanches, you automatically get a nineteen-out-of-twenty-times success rate.

It’s like playing a slot machine where the quarters jingle into your cup on every pull but the twentieth, when that one-arm bandit not only takes all your quarters back, it charges your credit card $10,000 and three big goons throw a blanket over you, pummel you with baseball bats, and throw you in the street. After you recover, you think it must have been a fluke. I mean you were winning on every pull. So you get back in the game and the quarters jingle away, but eventually, here it comes again, the credit card, the blanket, and the baseball bats. It takes a lot of pulls to learn the downside of the game. Thus, nearly everyone mistakes luck for skill. (See Table I-1 later in this chapter.)

The frightening truth is that in most close calls, the average person has no idea they even had a close call—kind of like playing soccer on a minefield. You didn’t weigh quite enough to set the thing off. In an ideal world, everyone would take a multiday avalanche class; then buy a beacon, probe, and shovel and practice with them; and finally, when they felt ready, they would venture into avalanche terrain, working their way into increasingly hazardous terrain as they gain confidence in their skills.

Tremper, Bruce (2008-09-30). Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain (Kindle Locations 295-311). Mountaineers Books.

[Hugh Conway]

I don't think there's a direct correlation between knowledge and bad outcomes.

I’m not sure what it is about avalanches, but people invariably overestimate their skills. This doesn’t happen with, say, accounting or physics or gardening, so what is it with avalanches?

That Tremper bit is poor - people overestimate their knowledge with most everything, including accounting, physics and gardening. The question of what is knowledge could be relevant to the discussion, but mostly it seems to be a commentary on the mile-wide vein of fatalism that runs through mountain sports.

[ak_powder_monkey]

Shit happens, you can't eliminate objective risk

[sfotex]

Shit happens, you can't eliminate objective risk

Setting off the avalanche that kills you really doesn't fit the definition of objective risk, or does it?

[TBS]

That Tremper bit is poor - people overestimate their knowledge with most everything, including accounting, physics and gardening. The question of what is knowledge could be relevant to the discussion, but mostly it seems to be a commentary on the mile-wide vein of fatalism that runs through mountain sports.

I am unaware of anyone getting killed because they incorrectly calculated depreciation expense, incorrectly calculated the distance to some star or planted their tomatoes in the wrong spot.

[coldfeet]

That Tremper bit is poor - people overestimate their knowledge with most everything, including accounting, physics and gardening. The question of what is knowledge could be relevant to the discussion, but mostly it seems to be a commentary on the mile-wide vein of fatalism that runs through mountain sports.

But he's right about the problem of people not evaluating the risk of rare high consequence events well, and it reinforcing their false sense that they know what is going on. I agree with you that this does happen elsewhere, including accounting and physics (and probably gardening). Examples include poor risk management by banks (underestimating risks from bundles of high-risk loans) and by NASA (we've launched the space shuttle N times and foam has come off, so the N+1'th time isn't likely to be a problem - I wish I was kidding, but this did factor into their decision making).

[dos bolsas]

And your point is?

I dunno, maybe just to point to out that those who participate in such sports at a high level tend to have different perspectives of events than those who participate recreationally (ie the Lone Stars of the world). There are always reasons for something happening, and often some luck, or lack thereof, has someting to do with it.

Personally, I believe there are higher powers and "reasons" at work than we care, or take the time, to realize or hear. Both in the instances of tragedy and close calls.

[powtario]

http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/s...bb-Gaffney-M-D

Read it, quite relevant to the discussion, especially the last part.

I'm not sure if its the news I'm reading or what, but in the last few years it seemed like snowmobile avy fatalities were skyrocketing whilst skier ones in NA weren't changing that much....and yet this year I haven't heard a peep about fatal incidents with sledders, just skiers.

As for the SB JP comparison, SB and other pipe skies have taken millions of hits, and this was the shitty first. Whereas in the last few years there have been a horrible number of very, very good skiers caught in avy's, and lots of negative outcomes.

Going on what coldfeet said, with the shitshow that was repackaged subprime mortgages contagion, there was only around a 5% risk it would explode in the spectacular way it did. And it did.

[old goat]

"The frightening truth is that in most close calls, the average person has no idea they even had a close call—kind of like playing soccer on a minefield. You didn’t weigh quite enough to set the thing off. In an ideal world, everyone would take a multiday avalanche class; then buy a beacon, probe, and shovel and practice with them; and finally, when they felt ready, they would venture into avalanche terrain, working their way into increasingly hazardous terrain as they gain confidence in their skills."

Tremper, Bruce (2008-09-30). Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain (Kindle Locations 295-311). Mountaineers Books.

There's a fallacy here. Learning, practicing, and tackling progressively more difficult ski routes will allow one to ski steeper, narrower, icier lines with increasing safety, although some risk is always there, and great skiers do fall and die. And increasing knowledge sometimes keeps people off slopes they might otherwise ski, and teaches them to ski one at a time, from safety point to safety point. But no amount of knowledge and skill makes a given slope at a given time any safer, and for people of a certain mind set--which is most people who ski steep, midwinter backcountry routes--increasing knowledge, skill, and confidence (and airbags and avalungs) may make them more likely, rather than less likely, to ski a dangerous slope. I'm not suggesting that people not do this; I am suggesting that people not kid themselves that they have everything under control. And ultimately, decisions re risk have to take into consideration not only snow science and topography, but one's situation in life. If you're a professional backcountry skier taking risk is part of the job and how you make your living--like a fireman or a cop or a tightrope walker or president of the united states (10% mortality over 4-8 years from trauma). If you're a recreational skier with a wife and kids your risk calculations should be different.

[Eastside]

how do I prevent myself from doing the same thing?

Listen to the little voice in the back of your head screaming at you and fuck what everyone else is doing. Bad decisions are the result of knowing better-either consciously or subconsciously-but doing it anyway for one reason or another.

[AdironRider]

I actually find myself getting mad at the reverse. Someone dies doing something retarded to the tenth power and its a party foul to call them on out it. Funny I just got a PM about this.

Doesnt change the facts of the situation. Someone died doing something that 99% of other people would not do. The Stevens avi is both timely and a perfect example. There is no defense for their decision making that day, but make one comment about it and all the bros chime in and say its not the time or the place.

Noones trying to be a dick cause someone died. That part is sad no matter how you slice it, but I dont have to sit in celebration when it shouldnt have ever happened in the first place.

[sfotex]

The Stevens avi is both timely and a perfect example. There is no defense for their decision making that day, but make one comment about it and all the bros chime in and say its not the time or the place. .

There's a time and place for everything, but this ain't the time. Give it a few weeks, the lessons will still be relevant - at this point it's just arm chair QB'ing.

[AdironRider]

How is it any different between now and two weeks from now? Call it what you want, but getting caught in a slide on a high avi danger forecast day is retarded. Stay home or ski in bounds. Thats not armchair QBing, thats the right decision and one most of us made.

In two weeks more snow will have fallen and noone outside of immediate friends and family will be thinking about an avalanche in Washington.

[sfotex]

How is it any different between now and two weeks from now?

Would you go to the funeral, walk up to the widow, and tell her her husband fucked up? Somethings are better left unsaid.
There will be a report, people involved in the accident will probably talk about their descion making process and where it went wrong, etc.
Telling people their dead friends made a bad choice is pretty poor form at this time.
You either get it or you don't.

[AdironRider]

This could have been my own Dad, and I would still be pissed at the decision making.

You can all give reach arounds to each other to make yourselves feel better, but I would rather have had three people not die yesterday just because they wanted to ski untouched pow.

That fact does not change. You just dont want to deal with the situation currently.

[sfotex]

This could have been my own Dad, and I would still be pissed at the decision making.

That fact does not change. You just dont want to deal with the situation currently.

Hey, look, these 3 people that died fucked up big time. I really don't care about who they were, but listen THEY FUCKED UP, if the death part didn't clue you in.
Hey guy, stop crying about your dead friend so I can tell you, he fucked up big time and is dead. Did you figure that out yet?
Maybe I'll take an ad out in the paper and tell everyone THEY FUCKED UP!

You don't get it.