GROUP TRAVEL PROTOCOLS

The Technique

1. The core rule of group travel is that exposure is expensive, so you spend it one person at a time. Only one rider is on the consequential slope at any moment, and everyone else is somewhere a slide cannot reach. This single habit does more for a party's survival than any amount of snow science, because it means that if the slope releases, you have one person in the debris and several rested, uninjured, unburied people with shovels standing above it. A group that rides together into a slide has no rescue party, only victims. If your group has one protocol, make it this one and enforce it without exception, including on the last run when everyone is tired and the light is going.
2. Learn to identify a real safe zone rather than a convenient stopping place. A safe zone is out of the path of any slide from above, which means you have looked uphill and traced every possible line of moving snow down to where you are standing. Ridges, knolls, high points, the uphill side of a substantial rock band, dense mature timber and ground well outside a runout can all work. What does not work: the bottom of the slope you just rode, the middle of a gully, a flat bench directly under a big feature, or anywhere you chose because it was flat and sheltered from the wind. Wind shelter and avalanche shelter are frequently opposites, because the sheltered spot is often exactly where the snow lands.
3. Plan the regroup points before you move, and say them out loud. Before anyone drops, the group agrees where the next stopping point is, in words specific enough that there is no ambiguity: the rock outcrop on the left at the base of the second pitch, not "down there somewhere". The rider going first goes to that point and stops there, even if the snow is excellent and the pitch below looks better. Riders who blow past the agreed regroup point are the most common way that good protocols quietly collapse, because once one person does it, the group is strung out through the terrain with no one watching anyone.
4. Manage spacing on the approach as carefully as on the descent. Skinning or riding up through avalanche terrain is not a safe phase, and people are caught on approaches regularly. Spread out on any slope that could slide so that a release does not take the whole line, cross exposed sections one at a time with the others watching from a safe zone, and do not stack up in a group at the base of a slope while people transition, eat or adjust gear. On a sled approach, do not idle in a group in a runout while you wait for a friend to unstick a machine, and keep a habit of parking out of paths rather than wherever is convenient.
5. Set the communication rules before the day starts. Everyone in the party, including the least experienced person, has an unconditional right to call a stop, and calling a stop needs no reason and earns no argument. Agree what "stop" means physically: everyone holds position in a safe place and the group talks. Agree how you will signal from a distance, since voices carry badly in snow and wind and sleds drown out everything. Agree who is watching the person who is exposed and that their only job during that time is to watch, not to fiddle with gear or set up a camera. The person watching should be able to say where their partner disappeared, which is the last seen point and the anchor of the entire search that follows.
6. Apply the same logic to sled specific terrain, where the pull is strongest. Hill climbs and highmarking put a heavy machine into the steepest, most loaded part of a start zone and then ask it to stall and turn around there. One machine on the slope at a time, every time, and everyone else parked outside the runout with a clear view. Do not send a rescue machine up to help a stuck rider while another rider is still on the slope. Do not group up at the base of a climb to watch, because the base of a climb is the runout. If a rider is stuck mid slope, that is a decision point for the whole group and not an automatic reason to add a second person and a second machine to the hazard.
7. Have a plan for other parties, because they are a hazard you do not control. If another group is above you, you are exposed to their decisions, and you should assume they have not seen you. Move out from under them, wait somewhere safe, or change objectives. Do not simply hope they are competent. If you are above another party, you owe them the same courtesy: make contact if you can, and do not drop onto terrain that runs into people. On busy days near access points, treat the presence of other tracks as information about human pressure, not as evidence that the slope is fine, since tracks only prove that someone got away with it.
8. Choose your party size deliberately. A party of two is thin, because one burial leaves one rescuer doing everything alone, and any injury leaves nobody to go for help. Larger parties bring more shovels and more capable rescue, but past a certain point they slow down, spread out, communicate badly and quietly diffuse responsibility, so nobody owns the decision. A working range for most backcountry days is a small group of three to five, everyone carrying transceiver, probe and shovel, everyone having practised with them this season, everyone knowing the plan. Whatever size you pick, count your people at every regroup, out loud, every time.
9. Understand why speed matters so much to all of this. Survival odds for a fully buried person fall steeply in the first period after burial, which means rescue is your own party, right there, with the gear on their backs. No outside help arrives inside the window that matters. Every protocol in this lesson exists to protect that outcome: one person exposed so the rest are free to dig, safe zones so the rescuers are not also buried, watching so the last seen point is known, spacing so the whole group is not in the debris, and a party big enough to run a search and a dig at the same time.

Common Mistakes

Regrouping at the bottom of the slope because it is the natural stopping place. Fix: choose regroup points off to the side and out of the runout, and look uphill from that exact spot before you settle there.

• Riding one at a time but with everyone watching from inside the path. Fix: place the watchers first, confirm their position is out of any possible line of moving snow, then send the rider.
• Watching your partner through a phone or a camera. Fix: whoever is spotting has one job, tracks the rider continuously, and can state the last seen point immediately.
• Adding a second sled to help a stuck rider mid slope without stopping to think. Fix: treat any stuck machine on avalanche terrain as a group decision point, and keep the one machine at a time rule until the group has agreed otherwise.

The Drill

On your next trip, run the full sequence on a benign slope with no consequence: name the regroup point out loud, place the spotters, send one rider, have the spotter state the last seen point when the rider stops, count heads at the regroup. Standard: do it for every pitch of the day without anyone needing to be reminded, and have one person keep score of how many times the protocol slipped. Any score above zero is the material for your debrief.

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