SNOW SPORTS · Advanced

BACKCOUNTRY DECISION MAKING

15 min · Full library · written from fifteen years in the terrain

The point

After this lesson you can run a structured go or no-go process for a backcountry objective, and recognise the human traps that get experienced riders killed.

Half the answer, free

The Technique

  1. The decision framework has three inputs: snowpack, terrain, people. Weakness in one can be managed. Weakness in two means change the plan. All three, go home.
  2. Read the avalanche forecast the night before and again in the morning. Know the danger rating, the problem type, the aspects and elevations flagged. Plan around the problem, not the rating alone.
  3. Terrain is the lever you control. Most avalanches release on slopes of roughly 30 to 45 degrees - confirm the exact framing with your avalanche course, and measure with an inclinometer, not your eye.
  4. Identify terrain traps before choosing lines: gullies, creek beds, cliffs below, trees below. A small slide into a terrain trap is a burial. The same slide on an open runout is a story.
Still under the glass
  • 3 more technique steps
  • The 3 mistakes that undo it, with fixes
  • The drill that builds the reflex
  • The safety non-negotiables

It opens when you book a trip that runs snow sports - these are the exact drills you run with your coach out there. Your booking unlocks this whole library.

Book a trip, unlock this libraryOr put $200 down - unlock it today

Ridden with us already? Enter your Union key.

First Tracks

New lessons, new film and new Intel land after every Recon. First Tracks reads it before anyone else.

← Pillow Lines & SpinesHeli & Cat Ski Preparation →

← Full snow sports curriculum

Get In Touch

LET'S BUILD
YOUR
ADVENTURE

Whether you want to surf Japan's legendary powder, ride the Old Telegraph Track to the tip of Cape York, or chase a New Zealand winter - tell us what you're dreaming about and we'll build the trip around you.

BaseAustralia · Operating Globally
Instagram@deej_ayes_an_alias

Read this before you send

These sports kill people. Not rarely, and not only the reckless - every season they kill riders who were experienced, fit, well equipped and doing everything properly. That is the honest starting position and everything else we do sits on top of it.

The mountain does not know who you are. Snow releases on people with twenty years in it. Machines roll on riders who have done that line a hundred times. Water, rock, trees and other people are indifferent to how good you have become. Every time you go out you are accepting a real chance that it goes wrong, and no amount of skill removes that chance - it only changes the odds.

What that looks like in these disciplines, plainly: avalanche burial and asphyxiation, being crushed under a machine, head and spinal injuries from falls and impacts, drowning, hypothermia, and collisions with trees, rocks and other riders.

We work in remote country, so distance is part of it. A serious injury usually means hours before a helicopter can reach you, and weather sometimes means no helicopter at all. Help being close is not a feature of any trip we run.

This is exactly why we prepare the way we do. Training before you ride, gear standards, minimum party sizes, people who know the ground, and a willingness to call a day off. All of it is about improving your odds and making the group capable of looking after itself. None of it makes anything safe, none of it makes anyone competent, and passing our training is not a qualification. Anybody who tells you they can make this safe is selling something.

Everyone out there is relying on everyone else having been honest about what they can actually do. If reading this has made you hesitate, that is worth listening to rather than talking yourself out of.

The enquiry cannot be sent until this is typed.