Staying alive in avalanche country

At the November Mountaineers meeting, Rick Rubio will discuss key aspects of avalanche safety, including how to recognize and avoid avalanche danger. Avalanche is a significant danger for winter activities in the backcountry; in the last decade, avalanches claimed an average of 24 lives per year in North America.

Rick writes “Northern New Mexico is notorious for dangerous avalanche conditions due to our weather patterns of early snowfall followed by cold dry conditions.  This weather pattern forms a weak snowpack that is waiting to be triggered by the next skier, mountaineer or snowmobiler.”

“On top of that, unstable snow doesn’t avalanche 95% of the time, so we don’t really know every time we go out if we are doing the right things or if we are just lucky.  We don’t generally get a second chance to correct mistakes.  This talk will emphasize a systematic method in which we predict, observe, and compare the avalanche problem using our knowledge, the forecast, and weather history.  We then methodically observe conditions along the way, then compare what we saw to what we predicted, and gain experience on managing the risk that way, without getting killed in an avalanche.”

Rick hails from Southern California, but now makes his home in Los Alamos. He has been an avid skier, hiker, and mountaineer for over 40 years. He has been alpine and backcountry skiing all over the Eastern Sierra, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Japan, and the Alps. In addition to the Los Alamos Mountaineers, he is also an active member of the Southern California Mountaineering Association, where he is on the Safety Committee in charge of testing new members. He is AIARE 2 certified in avalanche education.

We welcome all to this Mountaineers’ meeting. Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, it will be held on third Tuesday of the month. The social hour, with cookies, begins at 6:45 PM and the program at 7:00 PM. The presentation will be in-person at Los Alamos Nature Center; the slides will be live-streamed on Zoom. Registration is required to Zoom and recommended for in-person – we would love to see your smiling face. Registration is at https://peecla.app.neoncrm.com/np/clients/peecla/event.jsp?event=56383&.

Setting off into the winter backcountry, looking forward to natural wonders, but also carrying a healthy respect for avalanche danger.