Review | STRG_F Documentation Snowboard and Ski: How dangerous is deep snow?

Henning Rütten, my first impression after a few sentences on the question of why this documentary was filmed, reminds me of Markus Lanz. Trying to be serious, but without a deeper understanding. Meaningful sentences that lack any accuracy in terms of content.

The density of false statements is so high that the daily excesses of the current American president inevitably come to mind. With this in mind, I am taking over the fact-checking here on behalf of the New York Times or the Washington Post, so to speak.

But first things first.

"Why do so many underestimate the danger?" is the central question in the opening trailer. The underlying thesis: most or all people who die in avalanches underestimate the risk or are unaware of it, i.e. they are laypeople. This is wrong. The level of training of people in open terrain is increasing and the pure death figures say nothing about people's abilities, even if BILD or KRONE portray it differently every day.

Rütten, who is introduced by his interviewer as an "expert on deep snow", outlines the aim of his documentary as follows. In an earlier documentary - we will come back to this later - he investigated deaths caused by avalanche accidents, and now (January) "because the snow conditions were so extreme in Austria" and wanted to see "what has changed in recent years and how people deal with it today, whether awareness has changed."

He therefore states: Back then, people were reckless and underestimated the danger. And asks: What does it look like today, has there been a change in awareness? Has it gotten better or worse?"

With this initial statement, Rütten is already on a factual level with the major tabloid newspapers. Namely one that does not exist. The thesis is wrong in terms of content and the question derived from it therefore makes no sense.

The long-term trend in avalanche deaths is more or less staying the same or slightly decreasing despite an enormous increase in the number of skiers. There are a number of reasons for this, including the better training of winter sports enthusiasts, who are therefore more adapted to winter terrain.

Multiple references are made to the acute avalanche danger that prevailed on the day of the accident. The term "acute avalanche danger" is not a terminus technicus in winter sports, but an invention of journalists who want to write something dramatic. This journalistic acute usually refers to avalanche warning level 4 or 5, but that wasn't the case here either.

A few basic facts: All the media I know reported on the very dangerous avalanche situation on the day of the accident. That is simply not true. The journalists, including Rütten, are making the mistake here of extrapolating from the danger situation on the later days, when they were on site and the danger situation had risen sharply, to the danger situation at the time of the accident. That makes no sense. The mountain rescue team also ventured to the scene of the accident while it was still snowing. This speaks less for their selfless heroism, which is often emphasized in the media, and more for an objective assessment of the danger situation, which was within reasonable limits for the rescuers involved. It was only with the increasing amount of fresh snow that the rescue was interrupted during the night.

It becomes almost comical when Rütten, when asked whether he had ever been in a dangerous situation himself - the intention here is probably involvement in an avalanche accident, a serious fall or similar. - he then says with a serious face and after a short intake of breath that he "has lost skis in deep snow before, off-piste, late in the afternoon, twice [...]"

It then takes until the middle of this twenty-minute documentary to make it clear that not every deep snow fan is automatically tired of life. With Nadine Wallner and Manuela Mandl, there are some thoughtful interviewees and some basics are explained. However, the structural presentation of the topic is far from meeting the standards of a serious documentary.

With so many annoyances in so little time, I wondered whether this was a coincidence or whether there were structural reasons. Since Rütten himself refers several times to his 2014 documentary "Death in Deep Snow", I simply watched it too!

The 2014 documentary also bristles with arrogance coupled with factual ignorance. In addition, the documentary repeatedly manages to counteract its own statements with nonsensical cuts.

Two examples:

1. The editing problem

At the beginning of the documentary, starting at approx. 1:10, Rütten is in Sulden am Ortler to retrace an avalanche accident in which one person died.

At around minute 2:15, he comments with reference to Sulden: "Almost everyone skis in deep snow here. Those who can do it, those who can do it halfway. But I also see those who can't do it at all. And they don't just put themselves in danger."

The accident is described in the following sequence: A skier is buried by an avalanche triggered by another skier. However, this is not the scenario outlined above of a non-skier putting others in danger. The skier who triggered the avalanche was skiing an even steeper line and most likely belongs more in the category of risk-taking experts. I can't understand why these statements are cut one after the other in such a way.

Towards the end of the documentary, it says the following about the accident in Sölden: "Many people love deep snow, but underestimate the dangers. Like Volker K. from Bargteheide."

This implies that the dead man underestimated the dangers. However, this can neither be inferred from the accident description nor from the mountain rescuer's statements. On the contrary, the mountain guide and mountain rescuer from Sulden presents the group of the accident victim as responsible, capable skiers ("Volker K. and his three companions did not seek the risk [...]").

In the very next sentence, statements and assertions are made that are hard to beat in terms of naivety and factual falsity: "They thought they had the mountain under control. But in deep snow, the dangers are incalculable."

Both sentences are untenable. The insinuation that they were wrong in their risk assessment is not true in view of the description of the accident. It was not their assessment of the danger that was the problem, but the behavior of the other ski group. It wasn't that they didn't have the mountain under control, it was the misjudgement of other people that led to this accident.

However, I have to admit one thing to myself. If I had checked the youtube comments before watching the documentary, I would have quickly realized that I could have saved myself the trouble. One user asks:

"Hi STRG_F, Could you perhaps briefly explain what qualifies Henning as a "deep snow expert"? It is only mentioned in the article and the only reference is that he once made a short report about it. It doesn't seem as if he himself is an expert in deep snow or has any scientific knowledge of the subject. Kind regards"

The response from the STRG_F editorial team speaks for itself.

"Hi, Niklas! Please don't take the term expert for deep snow too literally. Gunnar rather meant that Henning is the journalist at NDR and STRG_F who has dealt most intensively with the topic of deep snow. Less with the snow itself than with the dangers of deep snow."