Solving for Z | A Calculus of Risk

[stealurface831]

One of the best from TGR.

Goes to prove the old adage: the mountains don't give a fuck if you're an expert. Really made me think more about how I approach risk. I can educate myself with all knowledge available to me and carry every piece of safety gear but ultimately be too driven by a goal to see the danger before me and end up fucking dead. This is nothing new: interaction with the mountains has always carried with it this reality, and I know that, but the emotional perspective of this film serves as a somber, introspective reminder.

[powdork]

I was waiting for that, thanks. In his final words, he sounded like he still thinks he can outsmart the mountains.

[stealurface831]

I was waiting for that, thanks. In his final words, he sounded like he still thinks he can outsmart the mountains.

i didn't know what to make of that part. i definitely got that sense of "i know what the mountains are telling me and that negates the risk" but he did acknowledge his own misjudgment. he also talked about slowing down on behalf of his family and how selfish it was to lead the live he leads while having people that are dependent on him. either way, i think a lot of guides and other pros have this part of their psyches that try to control the uncontrollable factors of the mountains.

[plugboots]

That helmet cam shot of the beginning of the slide was pretty freaky. He skied in the couloir, skis across it to a safe zone, then slowly skis forward and it starts to crack. Maybe above that there could’ve been more clues?

[TBS]

I’ve posted this in Slide Zone before
This event took the life of a PHD in snow science, and the leg of a friend.

[rod9301]

He's in a tough spot. Guiding in the tetons, with pretty high avie danger, and with the reputation of guiding in the gnarliest terrain there.
Someone books him 4 weeks in advance, and if when the day comes, if there's a weak layer, he might have to say ok, let's see what happens.
When if he was skiing for himself, he result probably say, nope, rest day.

He's not a typical guide, people don't hire him to learn how to ski, and in mellow terrain.

So he's in a lot higher danger than the typical guide, who has a mixture of clients, some mellow, some not.

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[plugboots]

I’ve posted this in Slide Zone before
This event took the life of a PHD in snow science, and the leg of a friend.

I learned a lot from that vid when I saw it. How does it apply here?

[TBS]

Another example of OPs first sentence - mountain didn’t care that Blake was an expert

[plugboots]

Ah, OK.

[North]

I was waiting for that, thanks. In his final words, he sounded like he still thinks he can outsmart the mountains.

So I'm not the only one to get that vibe? Tons of respect for the guy - undoubtedly knows more possesses more mountain skills than I ever will. Still, I've always felt that certain ski town micro cultures perpetuate an elevated view of what experience and knowledge can account for. This production only reinforces that feeling.

Misjudgment is acknowledged, all the right things are said, but I wonder if folks like Z who (seem to) knowingly operate on a thinner margin than most truly believe the words they are saying or if deep down that "I can outsmart it" conviction persists.

To some degree this exists in all of us - the feeling of "I can control the situation" is what allows us to expose ourselves to any sort of risk. Most will not knowingly expose themselves to something potentially lethal that they view as uncontrollable.

Side note: can anybody point me to the report of the that March 2020 incident? I was skiing daily in the Tetons last March and don't remember seeing the report.

[powdork]

He's in a tough spot. Guiding in the tetons, with pretty high avie danger, and with the reputation of guiding in the gnarliest terrain there.
Someone books him 4 weeks in advance, and if when the day comes, if there's a weak layer, he might have to say ok, let's see what happens.
When if he was skiing for himself, he result probably say, nope, rest day.

Were either of the accidents were when he was guiding? The first was just friends. There wasn't any info on the second. I looked up the month of March on jhavalanche.org but couldn't find anything that looked like it matched. Was it ever reported I wonder.


edit-just saw North's post above. If he didn't report it he can fuck right off.

[stealurface831]

Were either of the accidents were when he was guiding? The first was just friends. There wasn't any info on the second. I looked up the month of March on jhavalanche.org but couldn't find anything that looked like it matched. Was it ever reported I wonder.


edit-just saw North's post above. If he didn't report it he can fuck right off.

it didn't seem to me like he was guiding in the second i can't be sure.

agreed. with this new shit has come to light, he can fuck right off. way to not report a slide but then go and make a whole fucking short about it. at least the two idiots who triggered that slide off the road in co reported it immediately.

[North]

edit-just saw North's post above. If he didn't report it he can fuck right off.

The fatal incident was referenced in the film as "April 2019" but the report I found was from mid-May, so this could be another instance of honest mistake in the film:
https://www.jhavalanche.org/eventDetail/event/9068

It's more work to hunt down the "close calls" and I didn't search beyond March for the 2020 incident. Hoping somebody in the know would point me to it. If it was unreported I have some thoughts.

[John_B]

I believe he was skiing in Canada when that one happened. Maybe everyone could wait a bit before saddling up their high horses?

Also at least in Washington with NWAC guides share info but it is not via the publicly accessible observations reporting.

[Zeedashbo]

That was fantastic

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[powdork]

I don’t know. This is how he opens the scene from the hospital. Could be after coming back to Jackson I guess. Anyway the date on the paper is 3/10



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[stealurface831]

I believe he was skiing in Canada when that one happened. Maybe everyone could wait a bit before saddling up their high horses?

that is kinda relieving.

[North]

I believe he was skiing in Canada when that one happened. Maybe everyone could wait a bit before saddling up their high horses?

Fair enough. I hadn't considered that the second incident could've happened elsewhere. Was in a COVID mindset. To be clear the intent of my last post was to point out the very likely possibility that the report exists and I just haven't been able to locate it. Not searching for a "gotcha," just interested in learning what happened.

[Buster Highmen]

https://www.wildsnow.com/1086/guest-...ride-colorado/

From Josh Geetter:

On March 22nd or 23rd of 2003 myself and Lance McDonald dropped into the “Grandfather” (Gfthr) couloir on Little Wasatch West Face. It was to be the third or fourth descent, and I would do the first tele-gear descent. We were already trusted friends & ski partners since 1981-2 season, and had done a lot of “extreme” skiing together. We had also been to the Gfthr twice before, and backed off. This time we felt confident of everything except the “Oblivion Bowl” which threatens the lower Gfthr. Feeling that statistically it wouldn’t cut in the few minutes we were exposed, we went for it.

Colorado backcountry skiing.
Oblivion Bowl as it appears this spring, it feeds into the Grandfather. If you look close you can see Geetter’s tracks.
After leap frogging several pitches down we came to the intersection where it fell on me to “spot” while Lance skied. A few minutes later, while Lance had his skis off and was downclimbing around a chockstone, the Oblivion let loose. I screamed “Slide!” repeatedly. Lance heard me & sunk his ice axes, but to no avail. He was swept 100 feet towards the rappel, then 100ft over the rappel, then another 600ft down the chute & out onto the apron. He sustained multiple injuries, but was alive.

I skied down to the rappel hoping he just might be clinging on. To my horror he was gone. The anchors had been swept by the slide. I used 2 pitons, an ice screw, some nuts and my skis & poles to anchor myself to a slightly overhanging rock on the other side of the couloir. Helicopter rescue ensued, as hundreds of people had seen the entire shebang from the ski area. After they got Lance, Tom Sharp (pilot) & Brian O’Neill (rope man) tried to long line me a pack with a rope for the rappel. No go despite their life risking efforts.

I spent the night self rescuing up the chute, down LaJunta basin, across to Ballard & down to Bear Creek road. It was like an Indiana Jones flick! A horror show of outa the fry pan & into the fire & back again. That’s a whole story in itself.

Five years elapsed, and other than many descents of the “Why” couloir, an aborted descent of the “Oblivion Bowl,” and Peter Inglis’ astonishing solo ascent/descent of “Heaven Elevens in 2005? …nobody skied Wasatch West Face.

Enter 2007-2008 season. As the snow came in deep and stable I saw everything taking shape. I skied everything in “The Creek” every day early season. By December I started going “Long.” I skied Delta, San Joaquin, Wasatch N Face, LaJunta via Baker Steve chute to Jackass, Bridal Veil and out past the power plant & falls solo one day. I soloed the San Joaquin early & skied it a number of times.

Then, I saw that Little Wasatch W Face was probably coming into shape. I soloed a line on the South end of the West Face in mid January. Then Rick Willis and I skied “Homer’s Hairy Banana” at the South Edge of the West face. This hadn’t been skied in 12yrs. Then I skied the “Why” solo. Next I dropped “Heaven Eleven’s” with Peter Inglis. This broke open the face, and word got out amongst those who cared to know.

I was working my way back to the Grandfather. This was my private affair, but now, due to full view from the ski area, and my picking away at the face almost daily, it became very public. I moved quickly and soloed the Oblivion Bowl which dropped me into the GFTHR for the first time in 5yrs. I soloed the “Oblivion” again on a stormy day when no-one saw. Then, almost 5 years to the day, Lance & I closed the book on the Gfthr. We skied it w/o incident approx March 20, 2008 with two rappels. I repoeated it three more times in the next two weeks until I’d done it w/o rappels.

[jono]

Good little flick, thanks for posting. It's a good showcase of a couple cycles of the emotional perspective on risk management where knowledge gives confidence while confidently going bigger until failure corrects perception. Common among human endeavors--the history of suspension bridges looks similar.

I liked their use of the statement "I think I'm an infinitely better gauger of risk than I was before"...just before. Maybe the briefest description of Heuristic Traps is that losing objectivity is a leading cause of death out there. Being present should loosen the expert halo, etc. My take on the end may be more generous than some, but to me it sounds like he's acknowledging the problem more than claiming to have solved it.

But as this was inherently a journey of personal experience, it would be cool to see some of these professionals embrace things that tune out personal experience bias. Similar to the shift toward evidence based medicine, for example. Cue comments on the bro culture and all that.

[ill-advised strategy]

I think a lot of us who post here can relate, having lived lives flirting with disaster. This film does well with those contemplative after-action review phases where you have so much to process...grief, self-contempt, gratitude, guilt, wonderment, analysis, love, boredom, achievement, God, depression, mania, childhood, aging... It’s a weird thing we all go through in our own ways.

Oh, would I ever love to mount up on my high high horse where I preach about the simple, less-lethal pleasures of low angle hardpack. Oh my, that is one of my most prized, highest horsies about all the avalanche incidents in our modern ski world. But here I am, literally having just came in from commuting home on ice at night in a snowstorm at 30 mph on a sketchy ass homemade moped...because, I don’t know. I don’t even know.

Because. Because boredom doesn’t feel like boredom, it feels like death. Somehow, being further from death feels like death and going closer to death feels like living. It makes absolutely no fucking sense. It could only be because these genes were meant for a much shorter, much gnarlier, prehistoric life of hunting and battling and exploring a much wilder world than this. And like some ungoverned engine that revs itself to catastrophic failure with no load placed on it, life becomes powerfully unbearable without the engagement of some kind of mortal challenge.

I’m not proud of this trait, it’s some kind of addictive, maladaptive dysfunction that rides me into hospitals and human resources meetings and courtrooms and therapists. It’s rode me into a shit body full of fucked up joints and it’s very nearly rode me into an early grave so many times. So, nope, no high horse. Just thoughts and prayers for all of us fighting to live acceptably civilized lives “managing risk” with our wild, feral, inner-viking demons madly clawing to escape the insides of our skulls, whispering bad advice: faster fasssterrr; whispering cocky, fatalistic, siren songs of death...it’s finnnne, you got this!

[wordbird]

Its more about uncertainty(and the ability to decrease it not improving much after years of education, and hysteresis of the human mind.

[Buster Highmen]

Fuck this extreme shit; I'm all about the dentists pow now.

[garyfromterrace]

I think a lot of us who post here can relate, having lived lives flirting with disaster. This film does well with those contemplative after-action review phases where you have so much to process...grief, self-contempt, gratitude, guilt, wonderment, analysis, love, boredom, achievement, God, depression, mania, childhood, aging... It’s a weird thing we all go through in our own ways.

Oh, would I ever love to mount up on my high high horse where I preach about the simple, less-lethal pleasures of low angle hardpack. Oh my, that is one of my most prized, highest horsies about all the avalanche incidents in our modern ski world. But here I am, literally having just came in from commuting home on ice at night in a snowstorm at 30 mph on a sketchy ass homemade moped...because, I don’t know. I don’t even know.

Because. Because boredom doesn’t feel like boredom, it feels like death. Somehow, being further from death feels like death and going closer to death feels like living. It makes absolutely no fucking sense. It could only be because these genes were meant for a much shorter, much gnarlier, prehistoric life of hunting and battling and exploring a much wilder world than this. And like some ungoverned engine that revs itself to catastrophic failure with no load placed on it, life becomes powerfully unbearable without the engagement of some kind of mortal challenge.

I’m not proud of this trait, it’s some kind of addictive, maladaptive dysfunction that rides me into hospitals and human resources meetings and courtrooms and therapists. It’s rode me into a shit body full of fucked up joints and it’s very nearly rode me into an early grave so many times. So, nope, no high horse. Just thoughts and prayers for all of us fighting to live acceptably civilized lives “managing risk” with our wild, feral, inner-viking demons madly clawing to escape the insides of our skulls, whispering bad advice: faster fasssterrr; whispering cocky, fatalistic, siren songs of death...it’s finnnne, you got this!

Sig worthy. I feel ya.

[old goat]

A lot of words. I'm not sure they mean much--actions speak louder. (I'm talking about the movie, not IAS)