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  1. #51
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    "Forgot to buckle their seatbelt"?

    You know what? I’m ready for that. I know it’s possible. I’m emotionally prepared for the fact that what I do for fun could kill you or me of my wife or my kid or my best friend.

    And part of that is doing the right thing. Putting on your seatbelt, I guess we’re calling it. But I guess if I knew my choices and her choices - OUR CHOICES, since we’re partners - were poor and I knew better, I might not be ready for that. Those kids certainly climbed harder than I ever did.

    Really, it probably didn’t make any difference. A beacon doesn’t protect you from being wrung out like a wet sponge.

    I just think we need to be honest with ourselves and each other that we can die doing this.
    I didn't believe in reincarnation when I was your age either.

  2. #52
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    And are far more likely to die while driving to the trailhead. Buckled or not.

  3. #53
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    I'm guessing suffocation more likely than trauma as cause of death based on the look of that slope and slide area.

  4. #54
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    Quote Originally Posted by ~mikey b View Post
    You know what? I’m ready for that. I know it’s possible. I’m emotionally prepared for the fact that what I do for fun could kill you or me of my wife or my kid or my best friend.

    And part of that is doing the right thing. Putting on your seatbelt, I guess we’re calling it. But I guess if I knew my choices and her choices - OUR CHOICES, since we’re partners - were poor and I knew better, I might not be ready for that. Those kids certainly climbed harder than I ever did.

    Really, it probably didn’t make any difference. A beacon doesn’t protect you from being wrung out like a wet sponge.

    I just think we need to be honest with ourselves and each other that we can die doing this.
    Yeahbut... To me, it's not that she died, I think there's a pretty good possibility that it could be how and why she died. I wasn't there, so I don't know for sure - I'm just imagining here. But I can imagine that if I was a highly accomplished and experienced mountaineer, AND I deeply loved my wife, and she perished when there's a pretty fair chance that she might have lived if they had just done a beacon check...I'd be devastated way beyond how I'd feel if she'd died getting run over in a parking lot.

    In the photos that slope looked like there weren't a lot of trees. She may have died from asphyxiation rather than trauma. I can imagine that I might feel like I'd made easily avoidable mistakes that led to her death, and I can imagine I might feel like killing myself.

    I wasn't there, and all this is speculation, but there's no way I can say with certainty that I'd be prepared to bear my wife's death under any circumstances, even if we liked doing dangerous things. If I felt like I could have prevented it by following established procedures, well then...

    Just sayin'...

  5. #55
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    Yeah I can’t say for sure how I’d deal with something like this but it fkn bugs me. The whole thing sucks.
    I didn't believe in reincarnation when I was your age either.

  6. #56
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    Quote Originally Posted by MTT View Post
    I thought about this a few times. For the guy who killed himself after looking for and losing his wife.

    That must have been a special kind of hell. i cannot even imagine. The whole time wishing she were beeping
    You factor in physical fatigue on top of an incredibly emotionally intense and negative experience. Certainly even in situations like people losing partners to something like BASE jumping, similar emotions can come to the fore even without the addition of the drained physical reserves. Neurologically anyone is going to be running on empty after the emotional toll and the several hours of hard work.

  7. #57
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    Quote Originally Posted by Summit View Post
    Tell him to spend his money on a Level 1 class? Or buy life insurance?
    The Level 1 is an interesting thing, because without his changing peer group it might not offer much mitigation.

    Basically airbag packs for many people may be the single strongest mitigation factor they can put in place. Travel protocol is easy to ignore, and often ignored, beacons even if used by people practiced in their use offer less mitigation.

  8. #58
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    Quote Originally Posted by TownPump View Post
    The Level 1 is an interesting thing, because without his changing peer group it might not offer much mitigation.
    Good points. I spend a lot of time talking about who to tour with and who to just ride lifts with in my L1, but unless they are very flexible in association, it might be too late. That discussion is much more effective with newcomers.
    Quote Originally Posted by blurred
    skiing is hiking all day so that you can ski on shitty gear for 5 minutes.

  9. #59
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    Quote Originally Posted by TownPump View Post
    The Level 1 is an interesting thing, because without his changing peer group it might not offer much mitigation.

    Basically airbag packs for many people may be the single strongest mitigation factor they can put in place. Travel protocol is easy to ignore, and often ignored, beacons even if used by people practiced in their use offer less mitigation.
    I think but will not point out to buddy on FB that if he has been in 2 aviys and he figures a piece of HW will mitigate his problem he has a bigger probelm than which aviy bag to buy
    Lee Lau - xxx-er is the laziest Asian canuck I know

  10. #60
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    Quote Originally Posted by XXX-er View Post
    I think but will not point out to buddy on FB that if he has been in 2 aviys and he figures a piece of HW will mitigate his problem he has a bigger probelm than which aviy bag to buy
    But, it actually will provide mitigation in part. Similar to seat belts.

    For someone who has already been in two slides (and I presume this means he has been caught in two?) and therefore is in a high risk group, the mitigation from a piece of HW is, at least when that hardware is an airbag pack, actually more valuable than for someone who is in a lower-risk group in other ways (if that other person truly is in a lower risk group and not just blissfully taking on lots of low-probability, bad outcome risk instead).

  11. #61
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    Quote Originally Posted by TownPump View Post
    But, it actually will provide mitigation in part. Similar to seat belts.

    For someone who has already been in two slides (and I presume this means he has been caught in two?) and therefore is in a high risk group, the mitigation from a piece of HW is, at least when that hardware is an airbag pack, actually more valuable than for someone who is in a lower-risk group in other ways (if that other person truly is in a lower risk group and not just blissfully taking on lots of low-probability, bad outcome risk instead).
    Giving that guy an airbag would most likely cause him to take even greater risks and make him feel invincible. Then maybe he'll forget to pull cord or won't pull it in time or get strained thru a stand of trees and shredded to bits.

  12. #62
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    Can't be Rog, it is a hypothetical psychologist

  13. #63
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    Quote Originally Posted by cat in january View Post
    Can't be Rog, it is a hypothetical psychologist
    A psychologist would have known the right term, risk homeostasis, which would likely reduce or eliminate the consequence mitigation from the airbag for an individual like that.
    Quote Originally Posted by blurred
    skiing is hiking all day so that you can ski on shitty gear for 5 minutes.

  14. #64
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    Quote Originally Posted by MrMan View Post
    Giving that guy an airbag would most likely cause him to take even greater risks and make him feel invincible. Then maybe he'll forget to pull cord or won't pull it in time or get strained thru a stand of trees and shredded to bits.
    The compensation has to be greater than the mitigation for your statement to hold up, in terms of math. The best numbers in terms of existing studies of the issue suggest that airbag packs still effectively mitigate risk, even accounting for stupid or unskilled user behavior.

    Totally agree re the risk of trees, btw, but that by itself is not an indictment of airbag packs, as they don't necessarily increase exposure to that hazard.

    Totally agree it would be better for a user to also change their behavior (including peer group) to put them in a lower risk group before they even got to putting the pack on.

  15. #65
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    Quote Originally Posted by Summit View Post
    A psychologist would have known the right term, risk homeostasis, which would likely reduce or eliminate the consequence mitigation from the airbag for an individual like that.
    Wanting everyone to use highfalutin' terms all the time?

    We actually have a case study before us where great risks were undertaken in multiple regards, without an airbag pack. Risk homeostasis would have required even further bidding up in terms of risk.

    And in fact, looking at a wide range of "gear stuff," the risk homeostasis hypothesis, also referred to as risk compensation, doesn't hold up too well in all instances. Again, education and change of behavior still would be better. Don't need no Greek or Roman words to agree to that.

  16. #66
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    Quote Originally Posted by cmcrawfo View Post
    for someone to say that they are prepared to deal with the loss of a loved one in an instance like this .. I don't know, I am not in their heads space, but from my experience, you would either have be hardened by significant similar losses over time or be a complete sociopath. Even then, combat vets and crazys crack. Personally, I think the only thing that saved my mental health after losing a friend was the fact the other members of the group survived and we were able to provide support to each other, and quite the constant internal questioning voices. People are amazingly resilient, but a single isolated person is not so much.
    Along with losing the love of his life, (which makes him taking his own life totally understandable to me, especially for how it all went down), there may have been other factors at play which drove him to do himself in. Being a high profile, talented young man, how would he be able to face society, the climbing, skiing, and mountaineering community after such a tragedy occurred, the way it occurred right in their own back yard? Think of the guilt he'd feel he'd have to live with and the explaining he'd feel he'd have to do.

    Sorry no highfalutin' words, charts, or graphs here.

  17. #67
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    Seatbelts vs. beacons seems like a mediocre analogy because seat belts seem far more effective than beacons. The chances of your beacon saving your life are not as substantial. If you're in an avy that fully buries you such that a beacon is needed, there's a pretty good chance that you're gonna die from trauma or other circumstances anyway. While I haven't done an empiric study, I consistently read avy reports and it certainly seems like full-burial rescues are the exception, not the rule. (Feel free to correct me with objective data if I'm wrong. Again, I'm operating on anecdotal observation.)

    That said, I still wear my beacon because, even if the chances of it saving a life are small, it still increases those chances. And full-burial rescues, while perhaps rare, do happen--e.g., JT Holmes last year. But I don't put as much stock in beacon use as many others. The most critical decision you'll make isn't whether or not to use a beacon--it's whether to ski something or not.

    Tangent: Do you ever make the mistake of reading the comments section in an article about an outdoors sports death? E.g., Someone who died skiing, climbing, etc. They are inevitably filled with people making asinine Darwin's Award comments. People seem to believe that they've perfectly calibrated their own risk-tolerance level to some objectively verifiable standard; whereas, anyone who goes beyond their risk-tolerance level is an idiot.

  18. #68
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    No better or worse than the “he died doing what he loved” comments. No, she died scared shitless and he died distraught.
    I didn't believe in reincarnation when I was your age either.

  19. #69
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    If I died working or playing in the snow and dipshit Trump ever told my wife that I knew what I’d signed up for he’d be right for once.

    My old man died doing what he loved, in a place he loved, with people he loved. But he didn’t sign up for for that shit, he was just out having fun with his friends. He certainly didn’t die happy, he was probably scared and in pain and his friends had to deal with it. Nothing about that is fun, whether you are backcountry skiing or playing golf.

    I’ve lost several friends who were killed while playing in the mountains.
    I didn't believe in reincarnation when I was your age either.

  20. #70
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    Quote Originally Posted by AKbruin View Post
    .
    But I don't put as much stock in beacon use as many others. The most critical decision you'll make isn't whether or not to use a beacon--it's whether to ski something or not. .
    thats the crux move right there ^^ and it comes from knowledge not the gear catalogue

    and people who died doing what they loved ... are still just dead
    Lee Lau - xxx-er is the laziest Asian canuck I know

  21. #71
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    If no one cares if your body can't be dug out until the spring then I guess it makes sense to go out without a beacon.
    A few people feel the rain. Most people just get wet.

  22. #72
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    Quote Originally Posted by ~mikey b View Post
    No better or worse than the “he died doing what he loved” comments. No, she died scared shitless and he died distraught.
    I respectfully disagree. Loudly and publicly proclaiming that the deceased was an idiot because he or she had a different risk-tolerance level is objectively worse than offering a consolatory platitude.

  23. #73
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    Quote Originally Posted by AKbruin View Post
    I respectfully disagree. Loudly and publicly proclaiming that the deceased was an idiot because he or she had a different risk-tolerance level is objectively worse than offering a consolatory platitude.
    and I respectively disagree with you.

    You go into snow covered mountains and do not have a working beacon?
    You put people though significant work and risk who you might not even know. - Its selfish
    Own your fail. ~Jer~

  24. #74
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    I don't know what we're disagreeing about. Are we discussing the propriety of the Internet peanut gallery's public comments in the wake of a general outdoor death? Or are we talking about the wisdom of using beacons generally? My comment directly above addresses the former. My comment on the previous page addresses the latter. I suspect we have a disconnect.

  25. #75
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    The thing about the beacon in this case is that, and I’m Monday morning QBing here, it looks like it might very likely have allowed for a live recovery.

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