Patrick Nairz from the Tyrolean Avalanche Warning Service also happened to be out and about in the Schlick on January 15. He observed the two on their ascent towards Burgstall and photographed them from a distance before and after their descent. The pictures appeared in the evening in a blog entry from the LWD, with another reference to the old snow problem. For people who know the area and follow the Innsbruck freeride scene a bit - and there are many of them - it wasn't difficult to identify Dani and Antoine in the LWD post.
The public reactions to Dani's post on the internet were mostly positive: "Good that nothing happened", "Thanks for sharing". However, a few comments expressed what many were probably thinking - also in view of the impressive pictures on the LWD blog: "How stupid are you guys anyway"
Learning from mistakes
Admitting mistakes, to yourself as much as to others, is not easy. Drew Hardesty, longtime Utah avalanche warden and occasional, eloquent blogger, writes in Shame and the Social Contract that we want the recognition of our friends and ski touring partners just as much as the rest of the community - now often extended by hundreds of Facebook & quot;friends & quot; and Instagram followers. If we make mistakes, it can damage our reputation and we are deprived of the recognition we desire. We feel ashamed because we usually know how stupid and avoidable our mistake was. We rightly fear the ridicule of others, the reflexive "How stupid are you actually?". Perhaps mainly because we ourselves have reacted in the same way to the mistakes of others.
Studies from Canada suggest that winter sports enthusiasts there only report around 11 percent of non-fatal avalanches that they trigger or observe. (The Effect of Under-Reporting on Non-Fatal Involvements in Snow Avalanches on Vulnerability, Jamieson & Jones, 2015) This not only distorts various statistics on
accident and survival probabilities, but also means that the warning services miss out on valuable information. In addition, unnecessary search operations are repeatedly launched because it is unclear whether someone has been buried. What's more, if we don't talk about our mistakes, neither we nor anyone else can learn from them.
When we hear about an avalanche accident, the first thing we tend to do is look for reasons why it would never have happened to us. "I would never have skied the steep north-facing slope in a triple!" No na ned, as the Tyrolean says. We have identified the obvious problem and can now continue to be sure that we are not affected by it. Sure, there are the freeriders who always plunge straight into the steepest slopes, and there are tourers who are always out alone and without equipment, but then those are the others.
This neat division between us and the others, the mental demarcation of individual black sheep who are too stupid to read the situation report or have an avalanche transceiver with them, is convenient, practical and - as Drew Hardesty argues - wrong. There's not just the one big mistake (north-facing slope, steep, deadly three-pointer!), but chains of mistakes that get us there. The important question is not necessarily: "What was the big mistake?" - the answer is often, no na ned, obvious. The more important question is often: "How did the mistake happen?" And the answer to this almost always has to do with the much theorized, little practically considered human avalanche factor, which by definition affects us all and quite collectively as a society.
