Many people, especially those who have acquired substantial skiing proficiency in a setting that is superficially similar to the backcountry (i.e. maintained and patrolled ski areas) do not truly appreciate the risks of backcountry travel in the mountains.
We have become used to the concept that no matter what, help is just a phone call away. The mountains are a force of nature that we as backcountry users must have the most profound respect for. Conditions can change on a dime, and even the most skilled and resourceful SAR technicians may not be able to reach you for days. Some areas, like Canada's Rocky Mountain Parks, are blessed with numerous highly trained and fearless professional SAR personnel. Most are not. In rapidly changing mountain weather, any trip can become an overnight trip, perhaps in the harshest of conditions.
Mistakes happen. Even the best among us have been killed in freak accidents that could not have been anticipated or mitigated (I am reminded of this tragic and unpreventable incident this summer: http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/progs/np-pn/sp-ps/sec7/08-2012.aspx#...). But tragically, it is often the so-called "second mistake" that kills - the failure to take appropriate actions when things started to go wrong, or worse, the failure to appropriately assess situational risks.
For many feats of ski touring or mountaineering, less than 10% of days in a given season may be suitable for a successful attempt. More likely than not, today is not the day. Know when to turn back, and understand that help will come when it can, not when you need it.
Easy access to a high-risk environment is a significant element of
this story. Two lift trips to an expert ski area run is a low
barrier, several hours of hiking/showshoeing to a backcountry run is
a much higher barrier.
When only two lift trips and a warning sign are the barrier to a
backcountry run, we should not be surprised that people who might be
reluctant to spend several hours working hard to get to the top of a
risky run choose to accept a risk that they might not fully understand.
In several places like the top of 9990 at the canyons they have "You Will Die" signs http://parkcity.tv/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Dutch-Draw-1-1.... Jackson Hole's Sign: http://gallery.uberu.com/main.php?g2_itemId=4180&g2_imag.... If you can't understand what these signs say, I don't know what other help you can get. Usually there are lots of other scary "Experts Only" signs on the lifts that get you to these points. They scare the cr*p outta me and I've been boarding for 18 years. Also, as the article says, it's national forest on the other side of those rope lines. It's not illegal in many places to cross.
It's possible, but it could also work the other way around.
There may be significant pressure to "Go" if it takes a while to get to the destination, and you have misgivings only at the destination. I.e. sunk-cost fallacy -- we hiked for days to get here, and it looks a bit iffy, but we're not turning back now...
I'm an avid backcountry skier myself, and currently reading a book about avalanches by one of the leading experts in the field. He had a table in the book that considered 100 day seasons, and a 95% stability of snowpack (all avalanche slopes are safe 95% of the time, all the time, roughly and on average). That means a person with no knowledge is 95% safe, someone with perfect knowledge is 99.99% safe (I think that was the number he used).
The survivability rate ranged from 2 years (or was it even 2 months?) for those without knowledge, to 100 years.
Avalanches are scary. The mountains are scary. And yet there's no place I feel more at home. I wish I could do this more often, but right now I can't. In any case, I respect nature and want to learn as much about it as I can.
The book is called Surviving in Avalanche Terrain by Bruce Tremper, he's involved with an avalanche safety center in Utah (I believe he's the director there, but don't know for sure - book not at hand). It's an absolute must-read if you want to get your feet back on the ground and learn about the mountains. I'm learning a ton and enjoying the process.
We have become used to the concept that no matter what, help is just a phone call away. The mountains are a force of nature that we as backcountry users must have the most profound respect for. Conditions can change on a dime, and even the most skilled and resourceful SAR technicians may not be able to reach you for days. Some areas, like Canada's Rocky Mountain Parks, are blessed with numerous highly trained and fearless professional SAR personnel. Most are not. In rapidly changing mountain weather, any trip can become an overnight trip, perhaps in the harshest of conditions.
Mistakes happen. Even the best among us have been killed in freak accidents that could not have been anticipated or mitigated (I am reminded of this tragic and unpreventable incident this summer: http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/progs/np-pn/sp-ps/sec7/08-2012.aspx#...). But tragically, it is often the so-called "second mistake" that kills - the failure to take appropriate actions when things started to go wrong, or worse, the failure to appropriately assess situational risks.
For many feats of ski touring or mountaineering, less than 10% of days in a given season may be suitable for a successful attempt. More likely than not, today is not the day. Know when to turn back, and understand that help will come when it can, not when you need it.