SNOWBIKE IN AVALANCHE TERRAIN: WHAT IS DIFFERENT
13 min · Full library · written lesson, video in production
After this lesson you understand the ways a snowbike changes the avalanche problem compared to a sled, how to carry rescue gear on a machine you cannot step off quickly, and how to run a mixed group of bikes and sleds without exposing anyone unnecessarily.
The Technique
- Start with the boundary of this lesson, and take it seriously. This is not avalanche training and it cannot substitute for it. Everything below assumes you have already completed a recognised avalanche skills course in the country you are riding in, that you read the current forecast every day you ride, that you carry a transceiver, probe and shovel and can use all three under time pressure, and that your partners can do the same. If any of that is missing, the correct response to this lesson is to book the course rather than to ride with the knowledge in it. Snowbikes give riders access to terrain far beyond what their decision making has caught up with, and that gap is the actual hazard. What follows covers only the machine-specific differences, nothing more.
- Understand how a snowbike loads a slope differently to a sled. The track on a snowbike is narrower and shorter than a sled's, so the machine's weight and the rider's weight are concentrated over a smaller area of the snow surface. A snowbike also trenches by design when traction runs out, which means the track can cut down into the snowpack rather than riding across the top of it. Both of those matter when there is a weak layer under you, because what triggers a slab is usually a load applied to the snowpack in the right place, and a machine that digs is applying that load deeper than one that floats. Treat a bogged or trenching machine on a suspect slope as an actively worsening situation rather than merely an inconvenience, and do not stand next to it working out your options.
- Think hard about mobility and escape, because they are different on a bike and the difference cuts both ways. A snowbike turns out downhill in a shorter distance than most sleds and it fits through terrain that gives you nearby escape options in trees and broken ground. What it does not have is a big sled's ability to accelerate hard across an open slope and outrun a moving mass of snow, and in deep unconsolidated snow a bike's escape speed can be genuinely poor. The practical consequence is that your escape route has to be closer and more certain than a sled rider's. When you plan an exposure, plan it to a nearby island of safety you could reach at low speed rather than to a distant one you would need to sprint to. Then ask whether the exposure is worth taking at all.
- Abandoning a bike fast, rescue gear on the body, and mixed bike and sled group protocols
- 5 more technique steps
- The 4 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 biking - 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 todayRidden with us already? Enter your Union key.
Not booked yet? The founding list gets first access when the full library opens.
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.