May 22, 2014 • 42 mins
Each year, as snow builds on peaks across the world's mountain ranges, the potential for avalanches builds. Learn about the science of how these natural disasters develop and are triggered - and how to survive one if you ever find yourself trapped.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark and there's Charles Bryant and there's no ol
over there. It's like Jerry with a beard, and this
is stuff you should know. Yeah, that's a good way
(00:22):
to describe no Al because it's not at all accurate
except for the beard. But it's funny. It is funny.
That's the point that's going. It's going. Fine, you got
a good intro for this one. Noah, Really, I was
going to mention the terrible avalanche on Everest. Oh. Yeah,
it took the lives of I believe fifteen Sherpa. Yeah
(00:43):
that was sad. Yeah, it was especially sad because we
know how Scherpall work. We've done an episode on it before,
and you know, to Live and Die on the Mountain,
it's kind of like it's well, it's become the sharp
away a little bit, but it's still a major tragedy.
Because sure, but if you go back and listen to
that show or I think we even called it, what
(01:03):
like warm friend, Yeah, like they're really great and just
good souls, and it was it was super sad to
hear about that. Is that what prompted this idea? I
believe so, Yes, yes, okay, yes it was. I thought
it might have been. I know you know a lot
about snow crystal shape because of your Don't Be Dumb
(01:23):
episode recently, I thought that might have been it. Yeah,
about whether or not there is such things to snowflakes
that are exactly alike. What's the answer? I think that's
a good way to start out. No, not really, Okay,
there each one is perfect and special. If you had
if you're comparing snowflakes that are formed from a very
small amount of water, then you're probably going to find
(01:46):
some that are identical. But as I say in that
episode of Don't Be Dumb, if you count those, you're
a jerk. So like a real snowflake, like a snowflake
like that children love and that you haven't broidered on
your sweater. No, there's no two that are alike. That's
pretty cool, even though something like seventies septillion snowflakes fall
(02:07):
to Earth in a year. Wow, that's a lot of snowflakes. Yeah,
but when you put them all together, they don't necessarily stick. Yeah,
and every once in a while, something can happen, not
yodeling that can trigger an avalanche. Yeah, and I was
when we were reading through this. I've found that there
were a lot of differences obviously between avalanches and uh
(02:30):
slides that we've covered. Yeah, we did landslides. Yeah, and
I even found a few little similarities and wildfires which
I did not expect. Lay it on me. Well, we'll
get to it later, like potential ways to Well, we'll
get to it. We'll lay it on me at a
future time. Ok So, um avalanches, Yeah, Basically an avalanches
(02:51):
is uh, well, it's it's a failure of a large
or small amount of snow to stay in place any
longer friction once again, Yes, just like with landslides, Um,
the the mass overcomes the force of friction that's holding
it in place and it just kind of moves downhill
(03:11):
all at once. The thing is that doesn't seem like
a big deal, but in North America of an avalanche
can reach something like two hundred and thirty thousand cubic
meters in size. It's about twenty football fields filled ten
feet deep with snow. How fast I've seen up to
and beyond a hundred miles an hour once they really
(03:33):
get going. That's a big deal. Yeah, So twenty football
fields filled ten feet deep with snow moving in over
a hundred miles an hour down a mountain. If you're
on the way, yeah, to save the day. Pretty much,
you're in trouble basically. So avalanches are a pretty big deal.
Even though it's just snow, and snow is beautiful and
wonderful and cold, it's like all of it moving at
(03:56):
once is a problem. That's right. And um, there's a
lot of different ways that an avalanche can form, but
really there's three. There's three factors involved. You've got snow, yeah,
you have a slope or an incline, and then you
have some sort of trigger. Yeah, and like I said,
it's not yodeling. Loud sounds just don't really have what
(04:18):
it takes to trigger an avalanche. That's that's in the
movies that you'll see that, Yeah, German movies. That's right. Uh, well,
I guess let's back up a little bit to what
we're originally talking about, which was the shape of the
snow itself, because that has an impact on what's you know,
when the snow hits the ground, it's gonna form, it's
called a snow pack, and how stable the snow pack
(04:40):
is is depends on the snow that is that makes
up the snowpack, and like how it bonds together depends
on the actual shape of those little crystals. H if
you have a six pointed crystal, um, it's gonna be
steadier or more stable than like needle shaped crystals right
packed together better. Yeah. Then, so there's different factors that
(05:01):
contribute to what kind of snow falls, what kind of
snow accumulates, and then snow undergoes um a metamorphosis once
it becomes part of the snowpack, depending on conditions that's right.
For example, the temperature gra gradient has a big effect
on how snow within a snowpack, which is just these
blankets and blankets of snow that build up over the
(05:22):
course of a season. Um, if there's say a higher
temperature gradient, so at the surface it's very very cold,
but below towards the ground, it's actually warmer because of
the heat, the radiant heat coming out of the earth.
The larger the temperature gradient, the larger the difference in
(05:43):
the amount of water vapor. So warmer air or warmer
snow holds more water vapor. And water vapor likes homeostasis
just like everything else, so it moves from one end
to another, and that actually helps trigger metamorphosis of snowflake
shapes within the snow pack by um taking what's already rounded,
(06:05):
and that's what you want. That's a stable snowpack. Yeah,
which I thought would be more unstable, but it packs
together easier, right, Rounded snowflakes packed together easier. And when
water vapor moves from one place to another, uh, it
takes rounded snowflakes and actually makes them faceted, which are
more angled, yes, like flat surfaces basically, and those don't
(06:26):
lock together as well. So that's one form of instability.
Is when you have a temperature gradient. Yes, and if
you have a lot of those faceted flakes, it's going
to be called a depth whore h O a R.
And a horror is uh is the light like you
can even kind of see them on like sunny days,
this sort of shiny crystally surface um layer on top
(06:49):
that's like not really bonded exactly. It's frost is another
word for it, like horror. Like avalanche, we should name
this avalanches the disaster with the most jargon because there's
a lot of jargon involved in avalanches. There is. We've
already skipped over some of it. Like rhyme, Well, yeah,
rhyme is when um, yeah, it's basically have you ever
(07:11):
seen like a a ship going through the Arctic and
it has like globules of ice, or like a tree
collecting ice. That's rhyme where it's just basically a bunch
of water turns into ice really quick and accumulates quickly.
That's rhyme. Horrors frost rhyme is like globules of ice.
What about a grapple? Uh, that is when you have
(07:33):
deposits of rhyme that build up and form pellets of snow. Yeah,
but they're not stable even though they're pellets, like yeah,
which kind of flies in the face because I thought
round was more stable. I think they're larger though, Yeah,
I think they're like spherical, whereas round is like flat
and rounded edges. So pellets are like yeah those things.
(07:53):
You know, you get a handful of those yellow pellets,
roll them around in your palms like so, and you're
gonna see like it, there's no friction there. It overcomes friction.
That's true. Uh, if you have you can also get
rounding if if it's a low temperature gradient and you
get a lot of um subfreezing going on, and it's
gonna cause the rounding, which is actually good. That's gonna
(08:16):
make it more stable. Like we were talking about UM.
So you've got temperature gradient, you've got rounding from UM
a low temperature gradiment. You have different types of snow
that accumulate. If fascinating is can that be a verb?
I just made it one. Yeah, fascinating, Yeah, fascinating is
(08:36):
Basically it's another type of metamorphosis where snowflake undergoes a
change in the snowpack after it's already fallen. It's just
laying there like you think when snowfalls it's it's felt,
but now it's going through some changes. Basically, a puberty
of snow is what happens in the snowpack. And when
fascinating happens, it's the opposite of rounding. Those edges become
(08:57):
um more pronounced, more angular and um. A snowflake can
turn into what's called depth or h O A R
again uh, and it's pretty cool. Did you see the
picture of depth hor It's the coolest looking snowflake you
can find that it's pretty cool, Like it looks carved
out like, UM, it looks three D printed, basically, doesn't
it do? UM a piece of machinery or something. But
(09:20):
from the looks of it, it looks like it would
just totally lock in with any other snowflake. But for
some reason that's not the case. So when you get
depth Horor's is a very faceted snow packed snowflake. UM,
it's not going to lead to a stable snowpack. None
of these are basically everything except rounding UM leads to
(09:41):
an unstable snow pack. That's right, And that's one of
the triggers or one of the factors involved in an avalanche.
That's right. What you have is if you have a
failure level layer, and that's the weak layer inside the snowpack.
It's called the failure layer because it fails you and
causes the av inch. It fills everybody, but it can
(10:03):
be caused by a lot of things. Uh, the things
we're just mentioning and uh, depending on some other factors.
Is how it's gonna deal with that failure level. UM,
it can slough off the snow, and I think most
people have seen that is when you see like the
inverted V shape loose powdery snow coming down a mountain
that is slough and that is not super dangerous. It
(10:27):
usually doesn't do a lot of damage. Um, So that's
not like the worst case scenario now, and slough is
the result of Typically the failure layer is high up
in the snow pack, so it's just some surface snow
that's going to move as part of the avalanche. Yeah.
If it's deeper, then you're gonna get the the bad
(10:47):
boy of the avalanche scene, which is the slab avalanche.
And that's when the failure layer is deep down and
it's gonna bring obviously a lot more compact big chunks
sliding down over that that bed layer, or it could
be a huge chunk, a single chunk. Um reminiscent of
when uh, you have a lot of snow on your
(11:09):
windshield and the sun comes out and heats it and
the glass becomes warmer, so the bottom of it loses
friction and stability and slides down all at once. That's right.
That's basically a mini slab avalanche happening on your car. Yeah.
And if if it's wet um your slab, it's gonna
be slower, which sounds good. Um, but it's gonna hit
(11:29):
with more force. It has more water to it has
more mass and volume, more weight babe. Yeah. Um, So
let's talk about that slope. If they generally happen between
five and sixty and most common between and forty five degrees, uh,
is when you're gonna get an avalanche. If it's more
(11:50):
than that steeper than that, then it's just gonna be
sloughing constantly and probably not be a danger. And if
it's less than that, then it's not enough of the
slope to cause any problems. Yeah, it's not really going
to move very much, if at all. It's just called
party time on the mountain. There's also other factors, um
that contribute to whether an area's avalanche prone or not.
(12:12):
To like, Um, if it's on the um sunny side
of the mountain where it gets a lot of morning sun, uh,
it will actually warm up and and basically settle. The
ice pack settles and becomes more stable than on the
shadier side of the mountain. Same with leeward and windward.
Both of these I thought was the opposite of how
(12:34):
it should be. I had that same problem too, because
they say specifically, the Freese thaw cycle can can create
like a layer of ice in the snowpack that will
be a failure layer eventually. So if it's in the
sun every day, I mean it's slightly melting a little bit, right,
then you know, why wouldn't that also be the case.
I didn't get to the bottom of that one. I
(12:55):
have no idea, but that's what I kept coming across,
and source after source the same thing with Like you said, leeward,
it means it's it's on the opposite side of the wind,
and I would think that being on the windy side
would be more dangerous. Well, no, because that causes slough
the wind like blood. Okay, I guess that makes sense.
That one makes sense. It's the sunny side that's just confusing. Yeah,
(13:19):
I still say a strongest of wind could cause a slab.
I'm gonna I'm gonna fly in the faces of the experts.
And then um they also rate and not right like
this is a five star avalanche, the best I've seen
all season. They have um a rating scale from R
one D one to R five D five And yes, nerds,
there is an R two D two avalanche. I guess
(13:43):
you mean me, because that was gonna be my first question.
I sent you the chart, okay, but I'm still gonna ask.
So the R is the size of the avalanche relative
to the path that takes into account it's width, its length,
its depth, the size of the avl lanch our. One
is laughable. Our five is the whole side of the
(14:05):
mountain just came down. What's an R two D two.
It's a little above laughable. It's more like a woe.
It's kind of like you would imagine R two D
two is an avalanche, you know, all right? Uh? And
then our five D five the D stands for destructive force,
and that like in an R five D five, the
(14:26):
D of that avalanche can like gouge the earth. It's
it's moving with such power and intensity, and they can
go up to I think one point nine miles um,
traveling almost two miles at a at a solid with
a solid chunk. Pretty scary stuff. Yeah, it's scary stuff.
(14:50):
And before we get to even more stuff, let's take
an message break. All right, Okay, so I believe we're
talking scary things, and what can be scarier than avalanche
(15:11):
triggered by a yodeler we've already said that's not the case. Yeah,
it's three times. Um. Usually, well, sometimes it can be
Usually it's people, but sometimes it can be a natural thing,
like if a tree falls, or if the weather really
changes quickly. Um, what else, Um, the big chunk of
(15:31):
ice falling off a tree could trigger it. Yeah, a
cornice Um, basically, a an ice pack can build up
over a cliffs edge and just kind of hang there,
and then eventually that the it'll collapse under its own
weight and it can fall onto a ridge line below.
That can definitely trigger trigger an avalanche. But in most
cases it's people. Yeah. And apparently in most fatal avalanches,
(15:55):
the person who dies in the avalanche triggered it in
most cases. Oh yeah, karmic nature. I guess it seems
a little a little harsh, Yeah, a little imbalanced. Yeah,
I agree. Uh. All right, So let's say you have
an avalanche happening. There are gonna be three parts to
this avalanche. You've got your starting zone, which is above
(16:19):
the tree line, and that's where the slab actually, that's
the top part where it breaks free. It's also known
as a crown. A crown that makes sense. Then you
have your track and that's basically just the path that
it takes. Uh. You're gonna if you go to like
these mountains in the summertime, you might see that track
uh as a big open area of green grass between trees. Yeah,
(16:42):
because the avalanches wipe the trees off of that slope.
So like if you're if you're unclear on whether avalanches
are powerful, Yes, they take out trees on their way
down and houses and ski condos and yeah, skiers, which
is another reason why they're so dangerous for someone caught
(17:03):
in the avalanche because it's not only the snow that
may or may not bury you, you're also getting pummeled
across against stuff on your way down because of the
force of the avalanche bouring you along, like being whacked
into a tree or something. Yeah. Uh. And then you've
got your run out is the third segment, and that
is where it comes to a sliding slow stop and
(17:23):
that is bad news because it's it's they liken it
to concrete in this article and it just sets up
super hard and if you're underneath it, h you've got
you know, fifteen minutes or so to get yourself out
of there, or it's bye bye to life. Like the
clock is ticking. Yeah, apparently most people say that you
(17:47):
can survive buried in an avalanche for about eighteen minutes.
That's tops. And the best way to survive an avalanche
is to never start one. And there's techniques that um well,
basically government local governments that um where mountains and ski
slips are situated, and then ski resorts will higher ski
(18:08):
patrols basically go out and test. And there's actually people
who are called avalanche avalanche forecasters and they I guess,
study the snowfall, the the atmospheric conditions, like if there's
been a freeze thaw cycle, and they can predict roughly
like when or where an avalanche may happen, and they say,
(18:28):
point the howitzerer that way, and they'll make sure people
are off of the slope, and they shoot artillery at
slopes that try to trigger avalanches. That's one way to
do it. And that's why that's where it reminded me
of wildfires, um doing controlled burns and stuff like that, like,
oh yeah, they'll actually set off an avalanche to keep
an avalanche from happening. But that's really don't wait. Well,
(18:52):
there's also ski checking, which seems kind of but that's
almost like, um yeah, uh, I guess it is a
little bit. It's it's a mind bogglingly dangerous sounding. Yeah,
it's a job where you on purpose get on your
skis and ski along the fracture line, um, to see
(19:13):
what happens, to try to trigger trying to trigger it,
and then they're gonna quickly try and outrun it. Yes,
and they're hopefully skiing at the fracture line at the
top of it, like around the crown, rather than inside
the avalanche zone. You don't want to be there, so
it would it would fall out below them rather than
(19:35):
carry them down. And if you're ski checking, you're you're
never ski checking alone. You're always part of a team
and everybody's watching you, and you have a beacon on
and all the other stuff that you're supposed to have.
But it's still one of the more dangerous things I
think you can do in snow. Yeah. I hope we
have a listener that does this because I'd love to
know more about it. Ski checking, Yeah, yeah, I'd like
(19:56):
to hear that too. Some of the other things they
can do to prevent uh or interrupt an avalanche that
happens is to put the like physical objects in place
to prevent it, like nets and anchors and fences and
stuff like that, and that if an avalanche starts, at
least they can divert it or stop it quicker, or
(20:16):
maybe prevent it from happening to begin with. Sometimes they'll
hire local teens to just stand there and link arms,
stand in the Yeah, the red rover approach. It depends
on where you live. Estonia is huge on that level prevention. Uh,
they can happen anytime. They're most common in the winter obviously,
(20:38):
but they can happen in any month. And um, usually
in the first like twenty four hours after a big snowfall,
it's going to be a little more likely. I guess
things haven't settled in quite yet. Yes, And um, heavily
logged areas, areas that have been denuded of trees because
trees all taken together can kind of serve as anchors
(21:01):
for a snowpack. So they're trying to reforest areas is
a big, a big thing now And I wonder I
didn't find this out, But I wonder also if trees
represent a kind of a crack in a large snow
pack too, In that like if there was a piece
that was coming off, it would take less with it
because it would eventually reach a tree. In that tree
(21:23):
would represent a break in that connectiveness in the larger snowpack.
I'm going to say yes, I would say yes to
that just makes sense. Yeah, But the problem is people
like to do things like what are called back country
sports in places where there aren't trees. Yeah. I mean,
the majority of avalanche victims are youngish dudes who, let's
(21:49):
be honest, they're out there with their snowboard. They're getting
dropped in by a helicopter where there's plenty of Dowdets.
Who's who snowboard too? Yeah, that's true. But they did
say males is the most one, so I think that's
a fact. Oh yeah, okay, yeah, Um they're bros, you know,
they're ski bros. Um Man, I can't believe. I guess
(22:11):
I do believe that. But the person who causes the
avalanche is the person who most likely dies. It's just yeah.
And the reason why is because when you're when you
accidentally trigger trigger this avalanche, it doesn't you're not you're
on a on a line, a fault line basically that
you're triggering. But It doesn't necessarily mean that everything's gonna
happen below you. You could be skiing right through this
(22:34):
slab and the stuff above you is gonna come down too,
So like this whole slabs is gonna come down with
you in the middle of it. Which, so you're the
one who triggered it. You're the one who got buried
alive too. All right, Well, we don't want that to
happen to anybody, So, uh, how can we? I guess
we should talk about how to do your diligence as
a back country bro. Yeah, well you should do so basically, Um,
(23:00):
you before you go out, you want to check with
any local UM message boards or websites that have avalanche warnings,
the bro hotline, right yeah, you want to call be
like is there going to be right? Um? And there's
like people who are paid to monitor this kind of
thing and alert the public. So step one is to
(23:21):
know whether there's a high likelihood of an avalanche happening
where you are. Um. You also want to have taken
a course in surviving avalanches. If you're doing this hardcore
back country stuff, then hopefully you've done that beforehand. And
there's a lot to learn to like this isn't we're
(23:42):
just kind of scratching the surface here. Like there is
a lot too to know to understand avalanches, to be
able to forecast them, and to test like doing field tests. Um,
so you want to really know what you're doing before
you go out. You always want to go with somebody else.
Gotta have a brow, buddy. The thing that I think
(24:03):
you would just have to be a total idiot to
not have is a beacon, yes of functioning beacon on
you at all times, beneath your clothes so it can't
be swept away. Uh yeah. And you want that set
to transmit if you're the uh the person the transmit
tour um, so they can find you when you're buried
(24:26):
dying in fifteen minutes. They're not expensive, they're not um,
they're not hard to come by. And you if you
go out doing anything in any bad country sport and
you don't have one on again, Josh Clark thinks you're
an idiot. And well we may as well go ahead
and talk about a couple of other pieces of equipment
that you should have if you're into this. Um. They
(24:48):
have these little backpacks now that have air bags in them.
Um that you basically like pull a little ripcord in
a big pillowy bag erupts sort of like a car
airbag outside the top of it. And what that's gonna
do is take up a bunch of space so you
have air to breathe um once you're buried, and you
(25:09):
have you know, a big hole of air at least right.
Plus it also has the effect of um. If you
ever have a like a canister of mixed nuts and
you shake it, you'll notice like the bigger nuts, the
brazil nuts all moved to the top. Yeah. Uh, same
thing with you and an inflatable vest, you become bigger,
so you will move towards the top of the avalanche
(25:30):
slab and some padding in case there's debris. And then
the other cool thing is called the the avalon a
V A l U NNG and those are usually built
into your backpack two And it's super simple. All it
is is a it's sort of like a little scuba
mouthpiece that you breathe through. And what it does is
it diverts your exhalation down through the backpack and out
(25:55):
like your where your butt is. Because the danger there
is if you're trapped under snow and we'll get there
in a second. Um, you're gonna have a small like
pocket of air and one of the ways you can
die is from poisoning yourself with with your CEO two.
That's right. So if you got the avalon and you
got your air bag and your backpack, your beacon, your
beacon and maybe an inclinometer to see what that slope
(26:19):
is before you go tackle it with your snowboard and say, bro,
that one's degrees. Well, what do you want to be
above sixty? Yeah? Geez I know that's awfully close to Yeah,
maybe then go towards the slope. You also want to
do some tests too, like where you're going to be skiing, snowboarding,
(26:45):
high marking. Yea, be proactive. You want to dig what's
called a quick pit, which is basically you become an amateur. Um,
what is this snow person like smell a sense of
snow Avalanchiologists. No, no, snowologists. It is a snow ologist.
But there's a word. Right, you want to become an
(27:05):
amateur Santa clause. You dig a pit. Um that affords
you a view of all the layers of the snowpack,
so you can basically visually inspect it for a failure layer. Um.
There's other tests you can do as well, um that
we won't get into. But if you're going to go
out there, they should be teaching you this in your
UM in your back country survival class. Yeah, of course class, sure, um.
(27:30):
But you can also familiarize yourself on the U. S.
Forest Service UM website. They have a bunch of step
by step instructions with pictures for testing for avalanches. Yeah.
And we looked at these and it's just no, it
doesn't do any good to try and describe it. We
would just get you killed and go look at the diagrams. Yeah. Uh.
(27:52):
And you also wanna, you know, prick up your ears
and listen for wamping noises or hollow sounds and avoid
shady or it is like, just keep your eyes peeled.
If you're experienced out there, then you you're probably gonna
know what to look for. Yeah. And then there's one
other thing too. If you see tracks already in a snowpack,
that does not mean that it's already been tested and
(28:15):
is safe. No, that means you can go that way right, No,
it means that the person who went before you is
lucky technically possibly and the last one never never travel
above your partner, Like, oh yeah, that's a big one. Yeah.
If your partner gets above you, then they're being very selfish, yes,
or to kill you or you Yeah, yeah, you should wonder.
(28:36):
Wait that travel insurance policy I signed, Now I get it.
So if you've done all this, you do you you
know how to do a rash block test, and you
know how to dig a quick pit faster than anybody else,
and you're you never travel above your partner and you
still just triggered an avalanche. You've done everything right. But
(29:00):
it's it's real, right, you're the person, you're the victim.
Let's say, yes, all right, we're gonna give advice for
two people, the victim and then the person who sees
it and goes, oh my gosh, the witness. That guy
just got buried. Um, all right, So if you're one
of the brow victims, you're three ways you can die
u physical trauma. Like we said, let's say you get
(29:21):
smashed by a tree on the way down. You can
suffocate in the snow or die of hypothermia. Pick. None
of those are good. Uh, if you find that the
avalanche is happening. This is before you're buried alive. Uh.
And let's say you're a skier or a snowmobile or
or some other extreme sports person. Um they say to
(29:45):
try and like outski it and outright it if you can, um,
you know, get the little rear view herreor going and
hit the gas as quick as you can, um ski
off the slab. And if you can do that, then great.
If you can't, then you may be buried. And the
first thing you want to do is block your mouth
(30:06):
so it doesn't fill up with snow. And you want to,
you know, try and like put your arm over it
or block it as much as possible if you don't
have one of those air bags, because whatever little space
you create in front of your mouth is your breathable air.
You want to use one arm or your hand or something,
and with the other arm or leg or whatever you can,
(30:28):
you want to thrust it toward whatever you think is
up trying to get some sort of visual cue of
where you are two people and they see just a
swimming motion that's on your way down. You're trying to
basically swim your way to the top of the of
the pile of the slab that's carrying you down. Well. Yeah,
(30:50):
and then once you start to come to a stop,
then you throw your hand in front of your mouth
and you try to thrust the leg up or something
like that. What I read though, is you're gonna be
so disoriented you'll have good luck with any of this.
That's like punching a shark. Yeah, but some people can
do it. Yeah, it happens. Some people have the presence
of mind to do it. Those people are the ones
who these instructions are for. Right. Uh. They advise you
(31:12):
to bail on your ski gear. Um, if you have
one of those backpacks though, Um, with all your emergency gear,
obviously you want to hang onto that. Um. Here's the
hardest part. Why stay calm, Yeah, stay calm um. They
advise you, if you are honest snowmobile and you get
removed from it. I don't know how you would do this,
(31:32):
but try and get out of the path of the
snowmobile as well, because that will kill you. But again,
this is all happening so fast. It's just I guess
you rely on instinct. I guess, so you turn into
a steely nerved dude. Brouh. And then again staying calm,
(31:55):
stay calm, You're now buried under snow, and the best
advice is to stay home. You don't start screaming because
you're burning your oxygen. No one's gonna hear you because
they're still pretty far away. Hopefully they have they watched
you the whole time. We'll get into that in a second, um,
And you just have to do what you can by
conserving your energy, conserving your breath, and conserving your voice
(32:18):
until you hear somebody above you. Then you can start
screaming as loud as you want, but there's no sense
in screaming whatsoever until you hear somebody. Um, and then
you better have that beacon on. If you have that
beacon on, you set to transmit. You're with one or
more other people who were with you when this happened.
Hopefully they're not buried to your chances are actually pretty good.
(32:41):
There's something like a survival rate um for people who
are dug out with in the first fifteen minutes. Yeah,
that's pretty quick though. So I guess that brings us
to if you are the other bro and you see
this happen to your friend, Um, this is what you're
gonna want to do because you were there first. Help
like you may not have enough time. You know, you
(33:03):
got fifteen to eighteen minutes. You may not have enough
time to ski to the rescue unit to get word out.
So it's sort of up to you to try and
uh get your buddy out. Yeah. If you're in a
larger group, then yeah, you send some people back for help,
and then some other people stay to conduct the search
and rescue themselves. If it's just you, Basically, every bit
of advice is, if you have any idea of where
(33:27):
they went down, where do you think they might be,
go straight there. Yeah, And it's sort of like, uh,
following your golf shot, Like if it starts to happen,
you don't want to look around for help or anything.
You want to lock your eyeballs on your buddy and
follow that as long as you can until he completely disappears.
(33:48):
And wherever he disappears or she, that is your last Uh,
that's the point of reference you're gonna want to hit first. Yeah,
you want to just keep your eyes on that point
and go straight to it. Um you uh, basically you
want to wait a second. Well, it could be another avalanche. Yeah,
you want to make sure the snow is settled. Um.
And then you go over to the area where you
(34:10):
last saw the person and you take your own beacon.
Because the cool thing about beacons is not only do
they transmit, they receive, So any anybody with a beacon
can transmit for help and receive to lend help. Right. Yeah,
So when you do that, if you're just one person,
you go to the last place you saw the person
(34:31):
and you start your search using your transponder and you
start doing zig zagging motions down the mountain. Yeah, basically,
you do a sweep of the avalanche area. You do
a sweep. You might have something called an avalanche probe
on you, and that's super long ten or twelve foot
pole that collapses down to a couple of feet so
(34:51):
you can have it in your low backpack and you know,
it's basically a big poker that you can poke down
in the snow. If you hear your buddy go, then
that's great. And then um, some ski poles also have
like like the bottoms come off so that they can
be turned into um avalanche pokers. And hopefully you have
(35:11):
a shovel on you, because that is highly recommended as well.
I don't think they ever pointed that out. Yeah, you
can shovel a lot faster. You can move snow a
lot faster with a shovel with your hands. So if
you have a beacon, a probe, and a shovel, you
could be Okay, that's a T shirt. Yeah, and the
(35:32):
other side is a guy like falling off the snows. Uh.
So you said zigzagging if you're by yourself. If you're
with a group of folks, they recommend that you lock
arms and um sort of like you know, when you're
searching for a dead body in the woods, you just
set up a line of people to cover as much
ground as possible, and then if you find your body,
(35:52):
dig them out and uh, treat them as quickly as possible.
They may need a little CPR, they may need a
little t So turn on our CPR podcast your friends. Yeah,
remember staying alive. Oh yeah, and just pump the chest
to the beat of staining alive and everything will be
all right. That's right. Uh. And I've got nothing else
(36:15):
do you I don't either, Um no, that's about it.
Or if you want to avoid this stuff altogether, you
do like me and don't ski? Yeah, no bad country
sports for you. Huh No, I mean I used to ski,
but I was never very good. And uh, once you
hit a certain age and you're not a great skier,
(36:35):
it's like, why why even go out there. I've got
a fifty percent chance of injuring myself. I would say
you'd probably have a higher percentage chance than that. You think, Yeah, man,
I took a I was in Vermont skiing one time
and I took a spill that It was sort of
like Chevy Chase and Christmas Vacation. I slid. I had
(36:58):
to have slid half a mile down this mountain without
being able to stop myself on my butt without my skis,
and a little twelve year old maybe snowboarder snowboarded down
with my skis. Stuck him in next to me and said, dude,
I've never seen someone slide that far in my life.
(37:20):
And he snowboarded off, and I said, well, you're pretty young,
but yeah, it was pretty entertaining to see. I'm sure,
and this is when I was younger. It would be
much funnier now even Oh yeah, you know, like when
the old guy falls, it's always funny. That's I mean,
like you said, Chevy Chase movies. I do have one
(37:41):
more thing, Chuck. It turns out the St. Bernard as
a mountain rescue dog with its whiskey your brandy cask
around its neck, supposedly as a myth like they did that.
They did have St. Bernard's in the Alps and all that,
and um, they did use them to like carry supplies
and stuff and sometimes even spirits around their neck, but
(38:02):
whatever uses like, they were never used as like ski
patrol avalanche rescue dogs. They were just in the same
area that avalanche has happened in a lot and they
just happen to have booze around their necks. I call
that confirmed. M all right, Well, just the popular conception
that is St. Bernard is going to run up to
you and dig you out and then yeah, yes, it's
(38:24):
not correct. It's a napoleonic lie. I am going to
say that has happened once, okay, because I want to
think it happened. It's pretty cool and St. Bernards are
cool dogs, to be sure. Uh, if you want to
know more about avalanches, like we said, if you're serious
about back country sports, you better go take a course.
You better go to the park services website on avalanches.
(38:46):
Get that beacon, dude, Yes, or else Josh Clark thinks
you're a dummy. Um. And you can also go to
how stuff works dot com and type in Avalanche in
the search bar there. And since I said all that,
that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna
call this defiling history. And this dude purposefully said, if
you read this, please don't show Josh because I I
(39:08):
want to hear his reaction. So here we go. Hey, guys,
I was listening to the Fourth of July Extravaganza from
a few years back, uh, and realized I might have
ruined a piece of American history a few years ago
about a thicker, older book, looking to hollow it out
so I could keep money and other important items in
there that I wanted, uh, that I didn't want to
(39:29):
keep in my personal safe. He's not. A few days ago,
I was listening to the part two of that Fourth
of July extravaganza and on the way back to University
of Wisconsin, Go Badgers, and I heard you talking about
the book Epic of America. Do you remember talking about that? Vaguely? Yes.
As we had guest hosts, we had Joe and Dazzo
(39:50):
and Wyatt Senac in Joe Garden and Halle Haglind so
they may have reference that book, but I don't remember that.
I knew that was the name of the book I
bought to hollow out, but thought, surely it wasn't the
same book. I got home, took a closer look, and
it turns out I was wrong. Upon further research, I
found I had bought a first edition, uh one bona
fide copy of Epic of America by James tres Low Adams,
(40:13):
and I cut a hole in the middle of it.
I thought it's somewhat ironic I chose to fill the
Epic of America with money. Nonetheless, I'm distraught with my
lack of knowledge and accidental disregard for one of the
great analyzes of the American dream, that is from Grant.
Hermit's here we go, Grant. That's this reaction, Grant indignation.
He's ticked. You know, we got um hollowed out books
(40:37):
from the guys who make Rick and Morty Yeah, adult swim, Yeah,
hollowed out to fit perfectly a flask, the Rick and
Morty flask. It was pretty neat. Thanks for that. Why
don't you get one of those? Grant and I thought
when I saw that book, I thought, well, that's neat.
They sent us a book and it was called like
interesting science stuff or something like that. I think it
(40:57):
was called boring Science. Of boring Science's ward people away
from the book. You want to want to read that
all right? Then you open it up and you're like, WHOA,
I've got it on my bar right now. That's awesome.
Where else would it be? I guess on my shelf.
You're at work, in your work bag with you at
all times. H If you want to tell us about
(41:22):
some bonehead thing you did with a piece of Americana
or anything else we want to hear about it, you
can tweak to us at s Y s K Podcast.
You can join us on our Facebook page at Facebook
dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send
us email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and
as always, hang out with us at our home on
the web, the Ill Chill Crib Stuff you Should Know
(41:43):
dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark and there's Charles Bryant and there's no ol
over there. It's like Jerry with a beard, and this
is stuff you should know. Yeah, that's a good way
(00:22):
to describe no Al because it's not at all accurate
except for the beard. But it's funny. It is funny.
That's the point that's going. It's going. Fine, you got
a good intro for this one. Noah, Really, I was
going to mention the terrible avalanche on Everest. Oh. Yeah,
it took the lives of I believe fifteen Sherpa. Yeah
(00:43):
that was sad. Yeah, it was especially sad because we
know how Scherpall work. We've done an episode on it before,
and you know, to Live and Die on the Mountain,
it's kind of like it's well, it's become the sharp
away a little bit, but it's still a major tragedy.
Because sure, but if you go back and listen to
that show or I think we even called it, what
(01:03):
like warm friend, Yeah, like they're really great and just
good souls, and it was it was super sad to
hear about that. Is that what prompted this idea? I
believe so, Yes, yes, okay, yes it was. I thought
it might have been. I know you know a lot
about snow crystal shape because of your Don't Be Dumb
(01:23):
episode recently, I thought that might have been it. Yeah,
about whether or not there is such things to snowflakes
that are exactly alike. What's the answer? I think that's
a good way to start out. No, not really, Okay,
there each one is perfect and special. If you had
if you're comparing snowflakes that are formed from a very
small amount of water, then you're probably going to find
(01:46):
some that are identical. But as I say in that
episode of Don't Be Dumb, if you count those, you're
a jerk. So like a real snowflake, like a snowflake
like that children love and that you haven't broidered on
your sweater. No, there's no two that are alike. That's
pretty cool, even though something like seventies septillion snowflakes fall
(02:07):
to Earth in a year. Wow, that's a lot of snowflakes. Yeah,
but when you put them all together, they don't necessarily stick. Yeah,
and every once in a while, something can happen, not
yodeling that can trigger an avalanche. Yeah, and I was
when we were reading through this. I've found that there
were a lot of differences obviously between avalanches and uh
(02:30):
slides that we've covered. Yeah, we did landslides. Yeah, and
I even found a few little similarities and wildfires which
I did not expect. Lay it on me. Well, we'll
get to it later, like potential ways to Well, we'll
get to it. We'll lay it on me at a
future time. Ok So, um avalanches, Yeah, Basically an avalanches
(02:51):
is uh, well, it's it's a failure of a large
or small amount of snow to stay in place any
longer friction once again, Yes, just like with landslides, Um,
the the mass overcomes the force of friction that's holding
it in place and it just kind of moves downhill
(03:11):
all at once. The thing is that doesn't seem like
a big deal, but in North America of an avalanche
can reach something like two hundred and thirty thousand cubic
meters in size. It's about twenty football fields filled ten
feet deep with snow. How fast I've seen up to
and beyond a hundred miles an hour once they really
(03:33):
get going. That's a big deal. Yeah, So twenty football
fields filled ten feet deep with snow moving in over
a hundred miles an hour down a mountain. If you're
on the way, yeah, to save the day. Pretty much,
you're in trouble basically. So avalanches are a pretty big deal.
Even though it's just snow, and snow is beautiful and
wonderful and cold, it's like all of it moving at
(03:56):
once is a problem. That's right. And um, there's a
lot of different ways that an avalanche can form, but
really there's three. There's three factors involved. You've got snow, yeah,
you have a slope or an incline, and then you
have some sort of trigger. Yeah, and like I said,
it's not yodeling. Loud sounds just don't really have what
(04:18):
it takes to trigger an avalanche. That's that's in the
movies that you'll see that, Yeah, German movies. That's right. Uh, well,
I guess let's back up a little bit to what
we're originally talking about, which was the shape of the
snow itself, because that has an impact on what's you know,
when the snow hits the ground, it's gonna form, it's
called a snow pack, and how stable the snow pack
(04:40):
is is depends on the snow that is that makes
up the snowpack, and like how it bonds together depends
on the actual shape of those little crystals. H if
you have a six pointed crystal, um, it's gonna be
steadier or more stable than like needle shaped crystals right
packed together better. Yeah. Then, so there's different factors that
(05:01):
contribute to what kind of snow falls, what kind of
snow accumulates, and then snow undergoes um a metamorphosis once
it becomes part of the snowpack, depending on conditions that's right.
For example, the temperature gra gradient has a big effect
on how snow within a snowpack, which is just these
blankets and blankets of snow that build up over the
(05:22):
course of a season. Um, if there's say a higher
temperature gradient, so at the surface it's very very cold,
but below towards the ground, it's actually warmer because of
the heat, the radiant heat coming out of the earth.
The larger the temperature gradient, the larger the difference in
(05:43):
the amount of water vapor. So warmer air or warmer
snow holds more water vapor. And water vapor likes homeostasis
just like everything else, so it moves from one end
to another, and that actually helps trigger metamorphosis of snowflake
shapes within the snow pack by um taking what's already rounded,
(06:05):
and that's what you want. That's a stable snowpack. Yeah,
which I thought would be more unstable, but it packs
together easier, right, Rounded snowflakes packed together easier. And when
water vapor moves from one place to another, uh, it
takes rounded snowflakes and actually makes them faceted, which are
more angled, yes, like flat surfaces basically, and those don't
(06:26):
lock together as well. So that's one form of instability.
Is when you have a temperature gradient. Yes, and if
you have a lot of those faceted flakes, it's going
to be called a depth whore h O a R.
And a horror is uh is the light like you
can even kind of see them on like sunny days,
this sort of shiny crystally surface um layer on top
(06:49):
that's like not really bonded exactly. It's frost is another
word for it, like horror. Like avalanche, we should name
this avalanches the disaster with the most jargon because there's
a lot of jargon involved in avalanches. There is. We've
already skipped over some of it. Like rhyme, Well, yeah,
rhyme is when um, yeah, it's basically have you ever
(07:11):
seen like a a ship going through the Arctic and
it has like globules of ice, or like a tree
collecting ice. That's rhyme where it's just basically a bunch
of water turns into ice really quick and accumulates quickly.
That's rhyme. Horrors frost rhyme is like globules of ice.
What about a grapple? Uh, that is when you have
(07:33):
deposits of rhyme that build up and form pellets of snow. Yeah,
but they're not stable even though they're pellets, like yeah,
which kind of flies in the face because I thought
round was more stable. I think they're larger though, Yeah,
I think they're like spherical, whereas round is like flat
and rounded edges. So pellets are like yeah those things.
(07:53):
You know, you get a handful of those yellow pellets,
roll them around in your palms like so, and you're
gonna see like it, there's no friction there. It overcomes friction.
That's true. Uh, if you have you can also get
rounding if if it's a low temperature gradient and you
get a lot of um subfreezing going on, and it's
gonna cause the rounding, which is actually good. That's gonna
(08:16):
make it more stable. Like we were talking about UM.
So you've got temperature gradient, you've got rounding from UM
a low temperature gradiment. You have different types of snow
that accumulate. If fascinating is can that be a verb?
I just made it one. Yeah, fascinating, Yeah, fascinating is
(08:36):
Basically it's another type of metamorphosis where snowflake undergoes a
change in the snowpack after it's already fallen. It's just
laying there like you think when snowfalls it's it's felt,
but now it's going through some changes. Basically, a puberty
of snow is what happens in the snowpack. And when
fascinating happens, it's the opposite of rounding. Those edges become
(08:57):
um more pronounced, more angular and um. A snowflake can
turn into what's called depth or h O A R
again uh, and it's pretty cool. Did you see the
picture of depth hor It's the coolest looking snowflake you
can find that it's pretty cool, Like it looks carved
out like, UM, it looks three D printed, basically, doesn't
it do? UM a piece of machinery or something. But
(09:20):
from the looks of it, it looks like it would
just totally lock in with any other snowflake. But for
some reason that's not the case. So when you get
depth Horor's is a very faceted snow packed snowflake. UM,
it's not going to lead to a stable snowpack. None
of these are basically everything except rounding UM leads to
(09:41):
an unstable snow pack. That's right, And that's one of
the triggers or one of the factors involved in an avalanche.
That's right. What you have is if you have a
failure level layer, and that's the weak layer inside the snowpack.
It's called the failure layer because it fails you and
causes the av inch. It fills everybody, but it can
(10:03):
be caused by a lot of things. Uh, the things
we're just mentioning and uh, depending on some other factors.
Is how it's gonna deal with that failure level. UM,
it can slough off the snow, and I think most
people have seen that is when you see like the
inverted V shape loose powdery snow coming down a mountain
that is slough and that is not super dangerous. It
(10:27):
usually doesn't do a lot of damage. Um, So that's
not like the worst case scenario now, and slough is
the result of Typically the failure layer is high up
in the snow pack, so it's just some surface snow
that's going to move as part of the avalanche. Yeah.
If it's deeper, then you're gonna get the the bad
(10:47):
boy of the avalanche scene, which is the slab avalanche.
And that's when the failure layer is deep down and
it's gonna bring obviously a lot more compact big chunks
sliding down over that that bed layer, or it could
be a huge chunk, a single chunk. Um reminiscent of
when uh, you have a lot of snow on your
(11:09):
windshield and the sun comes out and heats it and
the glass becomes warmer, so the bottom of it loses
friction and stability and slides down all at once. That's right.
That's basically a mini slab avalanche happening on your car. Yeah.
And if if it's wet um your slab, it's gonna
be slower, which sounds good. Um, but it's gonna hit
(11:29):
with more force. It has more water to it has
more mass and volume, more weight babe. Yeah. Um, So
let's talk about that slope. If they generally happen between
five and sixty and most common between and forty five degrees, uh,
is when you're gonna get an avalanche. If it's more
(11:50):
than that steeper than that, then it's just gonna be
sloughing constantly and probably not be a danger. And if
it's less than that, then it's not enough of the
slope to cause any problems. Yeah, it's not really going
to move very much, if at all. It's just called
party time on the mountain. There's also other factors, um
that contribute to whether an area's avalanche prone or not.
(12:12):
To like, Um, if it's on the um sunny side
of the mountain where it gets a lot of morning sun, uh,
it will actually warm up and and basically settle. The
ice pack settles and becomes more stable than on the
shadier side of the mountain. Same with leeward and windward.
Both of these I thought was the opposite of how
(12:34):
it should be. I had that same problem too, because
they say specifically, the Freese thaw cycle can can create
like a layer of ice in the snowpack that will
be a failure layer eventually. So if it's in the
sun every day, I mean it's slightly melting a little bit, right,
then you know, why wouldn't that also be the case.
I didn't get to the bottom of that one. I
(12:55):
have no idea, but that's what I kept coming across,
and source after source the same thing with Like you said, leeward,
it means it's it's on the opposite side of the wind,
and I would think that being on the windy side
would be more dangerous. Well, no, because that causes slough
the wind like blood. Okay, I guess that makes sense.
That one makes sense. It's the sunny side that's just confusing. Yeah,
(13:19):
I still say a strongest of wind could cause a slab.
I'm gonna I'm gonna fly in the faces of the experts.
And then um they also rate and not right like
this is a five star avalanche, the best I've seen
all season. They have um a rating scale from R
one D one to R five D five And yes, nerds,
there is an R two D two avalanche. I guess
(13:43):
you mean me, because that was gonna be my first question.
I sent you the chart, okay, but I'm still gonna ask.
So the R is the size of the avalanche relative
to the path that takes into account it's width, its length,
its depth, the size of the avl lanch our. One
is laughable. Our five is the whole side of the
(14:05):
mountain just came down. What's an R two D two.
It's a little above laughable. It's more like a woe.
It's kind of like you would imagine R two D
two is an avalanche, you know, all right? Uh? And
then our five D five the D stands for destructive force,
and that like in an R five D five, the
(14:26):
D of that avalanche can like gouge the earth. It's
it's moving with such power and intensity, and they can
go up to I think one point nine miles um,
traveling almost two miles at a at a solid with
a solid chunk. Pretty scary stuff. Yeah, it's scary stuff.
(14:50):
And before we get to even more stuff, let's take
an message break. All right, Okay, so I believe we're
talking scary things, and what can be scarier than avalanche
(15:11):
triggered by a yodeler we've already said that's not the case. Yeah,
it's three times. Um. Usually, well, sometimes it can be
Usually it's people, but sometimes it can be a natural thing,
like if a tree falls, or if the weather really
changes quickly. Um, what else, Um, the big chunk of
(15:31):
ice falling off a tree could trigger it. Yeah, a
cornice Um, basically, a an ice pack can build up
over a cliffs edge and just kind of hang there,
and then eventually that the it'll collapse under its own
weight and it can fall onto a ridge line below.
That can definitely trigger trigger an avalanche. But in most
cases it's people. Yeah. And apparently in most fatal avalanches,
(15:55):
the person who dies in the avalanche triggered it in
most cases. Oh yeah, karmic nature. I guess it seems
a little a little harsh, Yeah, a little imbalanced. Yeah,
I agree. Uh. All right, So let's say you have
an avalanche happening. There are gonna be three parts to
this avalanche. You've got your starting zone, which is above
(16:19):
the tree line, and that's where the slab actually, that's
the top part where it breaks free. It's also known
as a crown. A crown that makes sense. Then you
have your track and that's basically just the path that
it takes. Uh. You're gonna if you go to like
these mountains in the summertime, you might see that track
uh as a big open area of green grass between trees. Yeah,
(16:42):
because the avalanches wipe the trees off of that slope.
So like if you're if you're unclear on whether avalanches
are powerful, Yes, they take out trees on their way
down and houses and ski condos and yeah, skiers, which
is another reason why they're so dangerous for someone caught
(17:03):
in the avalanche because it's not only the snow that
may or may not bury you, you're also getting pummeled
across against stuff on your way down because of the
force of the avalanche bouring you along, like being whacked
into a tree or something. Yeah. Uh. And then you've
got your run out is the third segment, and that
is where it comes to a sliding slow stop and
(17:23):
that is bad news because it's it's they liken it
to concrete in this article and it just sets up
super hard and if you're underneath it, h you've got
you know, fifteen minutes or so to get yourself out
of there, or it's bye bye to life. Like the
clock is ticking. Yeah, apparently most people say that you
(17:47):
can survive buried in an avalanche for about eighteen minutes.
That's tops. And the best way to survive an avalanche
is to never start one. And there's techniques that um well,
basically government local governments that um where mountains and ski
slips are situated, and then ski resorts will higher ski
(18:08):
patrols basically go out and test. And there's actually people
who are called avalanche avalanche forecasters and they I guess,
study the snowfall, the the atmospheric conditions, like if there's
been a freeze thaw cycle, and they can predict roughly
like when or where an avalanche may happen, and they say,
(18:28):
point the howitzerer that way, and they'll make sure people
are off of the slope, and they shoot artillery at
slopes that try to trigger avalanches. That's one way to
do it. And that's why that's where it reminded me
of wildfires, um doing controlled burns and stuff like that, like,
oh yeah, they'll actually set off an avalanche to keep
an avalanche from happening. But that's really don't wait. Well,
(18:52):
there's also ski checking, which seems kind of but that's
almost like, um yeah, uh, I guess it is a
little bit. It's it's a mind bogglingly dangerous sounding. Yeah,
it's a job where you on purpose get on your
skis and ski along the fracture line, um, to see
(19:13):
what happens, to try to trigger trying to trigger it,
and then they're gonna quickly try and outrun it. Yes,
and they're hopefully skiing at the fracture line at the
top of it, like around the crown, rather than inside
the avalanche zone. You don't want to be there, so
it would it would fall out below them rather than
(19:35):
carry them down. And if you're ski checking, you're you're
never ski checking alone. You're always part of a team
and everybody's watching you, and you have a beacon on
and all the other stuff that you're supposed to have.
But it's still one of the more dangerous things I
think you can do in snow. Yeah. I hope we
have a listener that does this because I'd love to
know more about it. Ski checking, Yeah, yeah, I'd like
(19:56):
to hear that too. Some of the other things they
can do to prevent uh or interrupt an avalanche that
happens is to put the like physical objects in place
to prevent it, like nets and anchors and fences and
stuff like that, and that if an avalanche starts, at
least they can divert it or stop it quicker, or
(20:16):
maybe prevent it from happening to begin with. Sometimes they'll
hire local teens to just stand there and link arms,
stand in the Yeah, the red rover approach. It depends
on where you live. Estonia is huge on that level prevention. Uh,
they can happen anytime. They're most common in the winter obviously,
(20:38):
but they can happen in any month. And um, usually
in the first like twenty four hours after a big snowfall,
it's going to be a little more likely. I guess
things haven't settled in quite yet. Yes, And um, heavily
logged areas, areas that have been denuded of trees because
trees all taken together can kind of serve as anchors
(21:01):
for a snowpack. So they're trying to reforest areas is
a big, a big thing now And I wonder I
didn't find this out, But I wonder also if trees
represent a kind of a crack in a large snow
pack too, In that like if there was a piece
that was coming off, it would take less with it
because it would eventually reach a tree. In that tree
(21:23):
would represent a break in that connectiveness in the larger snowpack.
I'm going to say yes, I would say yes to
that just makes sense. Yeah, But the problem is people
like to do things like what are called back country
sports in places where there aren't trees. Yeah. I mean,
the majority of avalanche victims are youngish dudes who, let's
(21:49):
be honest, they're out there with their snowboard. They're getting
dropped in by a helicopter where there's plenty of Dowdets.
Who's who snowboard too? Yeah, that's true. But they did
say males is the most one, so I think that's
a fact. Oh yeah, okay, yeah, Um they're bros, you know,
they're ski bros. Um Man, I can't believe. I guess
(22:11):
I do believe that. But the person who causes the
avalanche is the person who most likely dies. It's just yeah.
And the reason why is because when you're when you
accidentally trigger trigger this avalanche, it doesn't you're not you're
on a on a line, a fault line basically that
you're triggering. But It doesn't necessarily mean that everything's gonna
happen below you. You could be skiing right through this
(22:34):
slab and the stuff above you is gonna come down too,
So like this whole slabs is gonna come down with
you in the middle of it. Which, so you're the
one who triggered it. You're the one who got buried
alive too. All right, Well, we don't want that to
happen to anybody, So, uh, how can we? I guess
we should talk about how to do your diligence as
a back country bro. Yeah, well you should do so basically, Um,
(23:00):
you before you go out, you want to check with
any local UM message boards or websites that have avalanche warnings,
the bro hotline, right yeah, you want to call be
like is there going to be right? Um? And there's
like people who are paid to monitor this kind of
thing and alert the public. So step one is to
(23:21):
know whether there's a high likelihood of an avalanche happening
where you are. Um. You also want to have taken
a course in surviving avalanches. If you're doing this hardcore
back country stuff, then hopefully you've done that beforehand. And
there's a lot to learn to like this isn't we're
(23:42):
just kind of scratching the surface here. Like there is
a lot too to know to understand avalanches, to be
able to forecast them, and to test like doing field tests. Um,
so you want to really know what you're doing before
you go out. You always want to go with somebody else.
Gotta have a brow, buddy. The thing that I think
(24:03):
you would just have to be a total idiot to
not have is a beacon, yes of functioning beacon on
you at all times, beneath your clothes so it can't
be swept away. Uh yeah. And you want that set
to transmit if you're the uh the person the transmit
tour um, so they can find you when you're buried
(24:26):
dying in fifteen minutes. They're not expensive, they're not um,
they're not hard to come by. And you if you
go out doing anything in any bad country sport and
you don't have one on again, Josh Clark thinks you're
an idiot. And well we may as well go ahead
and talk about a couple of other pieces of equipment
that you should have if you're into this. Um. They
(24:48):
have these little backpacks now that have air bags in them.
Um that you basically like pull a little ripcord in
a big pillowy bag erupts sort of like a car
airbag outside the top of it. And what that's gonna
do is take up a bunch of space so you
have air to breathe um once you're buried, and you
(25:09):
have you know, a big hole of air at least right.
Plus it also has the effect of um. If you
ever have a like a canister of mixed nuts and
you shake it, you'll notice like the bigger nuts, the
brazil nuts all moved to the top. Yeah. Uh, same
thing with you and an inflatable vest, you become bigger,
so you will move towards the top of the avalanche
(25:30):
slab and some padding in case there's debris. And then
the other cool thing is called the the avalon a
V A l U NNG and those are usually built
into your backpack two And it's super simple. All it
is is a it's sort of like a little scuba
mouthpiece that you breathe through. And what it does is
it diverts your exhalation down through the backpack and out
(25:55):
like your where your butt is. Because the danger there
is if you're trapped under snow and we'll get there
in a second. Um, you're gonna have a small like
pocket of air and one of the ways you can
die is from poisoning yourself with with your CEO two.
That's right. So if you got the avalon and you
got your air bag and your backpack, your beacon, your
beacon and maybe an inclinometer to see what that slope
(26:19):
is before you go tackle it with your snowboard and say, bro,
that one's degrees. Well, what do you want to be
above sixty? Yeah? Geez I know that's awfully close to Yeah,
maybe then go towards the slope. You also want to
do some tests too, like where you're going to be skiing, snowboarding,
(26:45):
high marking. Yea, be proactive. You want to dig what's
called a quick pit, which is basically you become an amateur. Um,
what is this snow person like smell a sense of
snow Avalanchiologists. No, no, snowologists. It is a snow ologist.
But there's a word. Right, you want to become an
(27:05):
amateur Santa clause. You dig a pit. Um that affords
you a view of all the layers of the snowpack,
so you can basically visually inspect it for a failure layer. Um.
There's other tests you can do as well, um that
we won't get into. But if you're going to go
out there, they should be teaching you this in your
UM in your back country survival class. Yeah, of course class, sure, um.
(27:30):
But you can also familiarize yourself on the U. S.
Forest Service UM website. They have a bunch of step
by step instructions with pictures for testing for avalanches. Yeah.
And we looked at these and it's just no, it
doesn't do any good to try and describe it. We
would just get you killed and go look at the diagrams. Yeah. Uh.
(27:52):
And you also wanna, you know, prick up your ears
and listen for wamping noises or hollow sounds and avoid
shady or it is like, just keep your eyes peeled.
If you're experienced out there, then you you're probably gonna
know what to look for. Yeah. And then there's one
other thing too. If you see tracks already in a snowpack,
that does not mean that it's already been tested and
(28:15):
is safe. No, that means you can go that way right, No,
it means that the person who went before you is
lucky technically possibly and the last one never never travel
above your partner, Like, oh yeah, that's a big one. Yeah.
If your partner gets above you, then they're being very selfish, yes,
or to kill you or you Yeah, yeah, you should wonder.
(28:36):
Wait that travel insurance policy I signed, Now I get it.
So if you've done all this, you do you you
know how to do a rash block test, and you
know how to dig a quick pit faster than anybody else,
and you're you never travel above your partner and you
still just triggered an avalanche. You've done everything right. But
(29:00):
it's it's real, right, you're the person, you're the victim.
Let's say, yes, all right, we're gonna give advice for
two people, the victim and then the person who sees
it and goes, oh my gosh, the witness. That guy
just got buried. Um, all right, So if you're one
of the brow victims, you're three ways you can die
u physical trauma. Like we said, let's say you get
(29:21):
smashed by a tree on the way down. You can
suffocate in the snow or die of hypothermia. Pick. None
of those are good. Uh, if you find that the
avalanche is happening. This is before you're buried alive. Uh.
And let's say you're a skier or a snowmobile or
or some other extreme sports person. Um they say to
(29:45):
try and like outski it and outright it if you can, um,
you know, get the little rear view herreor going and
hit the gas as quick as you can, um ski
off the slab. And if you can do that, then great.
If you can't, then you may be buried. And the
first thing you want to do is block your mouth
(30:06):
so it doesn't fill up with snow. And you want to,
you know, try and like put your arm over it
or block it as much as possible if you don't
have one of those air bags, because whatever little space
you create in front of your mouth is your breathable air.
You want to use one arm or your hand or something,
and with the other arm or leg or whatever you can,
(30:28):
you want to thrust it toward whatever you think is
up trying to get some sort of visual cue of
where you are two people and they see just a
swimming motion that's on your way down. You're trying to
basically swim your way to the top of the of
the pile of the slab that's carrying you down. Well. Yeah,
(30:50):
and then once you start to come to a stop,
then you throw your hand in front of your mouth
and you try to thrust the leg up or something
like that. What I read though, is you're gonna be
so disoriented you'll have good luck with any of this.
That's like punching a shark. Yeah, but some people can
do it. Yeah, it happens. Some people have the presence
of mind to do it. Those people are the ones
who these instructions are for. Right. Uh. They advise you
(31:12):
to bail on your ski gear. Um, if you have
one of those backpacks though, Um, with all your emergency gear,
obviously you want to hang onto that. Um. Here's the
hardest part. Why stay calm, Yeah, stay calm um. They
advise you, if you are honest snowmobile and you get
removed from it. I don't know how you would do this,
(31:32):
but try and get out of the path of the
snowmobile as well, because that will kill you. But again,
this is all happening so fast. It's just I guess
you rely on instinct. I guess, so you turn into
a steely nerved dude. Brouh. And then again staying calm,
(31:55):
stay calm, You're now buried under snow, and the best
advice is to stay home. You don't start screaming because
you're burning your oxygen. No one's gonna hear you because
they're still pretty far away. Hopefully they have they watched
you the whole time. We'll get into that in a second, um,
And you just have to do what you can by
conserving your energy, conserving your breath, and conserving your voice
(32:18):
until you hear somebody above you. Then you can start
screaming as loud as you want, but there's no sense
in screaming whatsoever until you hear somebody. Um, and then
you better have that beacon on. If you have that
beacon on, you set to transmit. You're with one or
more other people who were with you when this happened.
Hopefully they're not buried to your chances are actually pretty good.
(32:41):
There's something like a survival rate um for people who
are dug out with in the first fifteen minutes. Yeah,
that's pretty quick though. So I guess that brings us
to if you are the other bro and you see
this happen to your friend, Um, this is what you're
gonna want to do because you were there first. Help
like you may not have enough time. You know, you
(33:03):
got fifteen to eighteen minutes. You may not have enough
time to ski to the rescue unit to get word out.
So it's sort of up to you to try and
uh get your buddy out. Yeah. If you're in a
larger group, then yeah, you send some people back for help,
and then some other people stay to conduct the search
and rescue themselves. If it's just you, Basically, every bit
of advice is, if you have any idea of where
(33:27):
they went down, where do you think they might be,
go straight there. Yeah, And it's sort of like, uh,
following your golf shot, Like if it starts to happen,
you don't want to look around for help or anything.
You want to lock your eyeballs on your buddy and
follow that as long as you can until he completely disappears.
(33:48):
And wherever he disappears or she, that is your last Uh,
that's the point of reference you're gonna want to hit first. Yeah,
you want to just keep your eyes on that point
and go straight to it. Um you uh, basically you
want to wait a second. Well, it could be another avalanche. Yeah,
you want to make sure the snow is settled. Um.
And then you go over to the area where you
(34:10):
last saw the person and you take your own beacon.
Because the cool thing about beacons is not only do
they transmit, they receive, So any anybody with a beacon
can transmit for help and receive to lend help. Right. Yeah,
So when you do that, if you're just one person,
you go to the last place you saw the person
(34:31):
and you start your search using your transponder and you
start doing zig zagging motions down the mountain. Yeah, basically,
you do a sweep of the avalanche area. You do
a sweep. You might have something called an avalanche probe
on you, and that's super long ten or twelve foot
pole that collapses down to a couple of feet so
(34:51):
you can have it in your low backpack and you know,
it's basically a big poker that you can poke down
in the snow. If you hear your buddy go, then
that's great. And then um, some ski poles also have
like like the bottoms come off so that they can
be turned into um avalanche pokers. And hopefully you have
(35:11):
a shovel on you, because that is highly recommended as well.
I don't think they ever pointed that out. Yeah, you
can shovel a lot faster. You can move snow a
lot faster with a shovel with your hands. So if
you have a beacon, a probe, and a shovel, you
could be Okay, that's a T shirt. Yeah, and the
(35:32):
other side is a guy like falling off the snows. Uh.
So you said zigzagging if you're by yourself. If you're
with a group of folks, they recommend that you lock
arms and um sort of like you know, when you're
searching for a dead body in the woods, you just
set up a line of people to cover as much
ground as possible, and then if you find your body,
(35:52):
dig them out and uh, treat them as quickly as possible.
They may need a little CPR, they may need a
little t So turn on our CPR podcast your friends. Yeah,
remember staying alive. Oh yeah, and just pump the chest
to the beat of staining alive and everything will be
all right. That's right. Uh. And I've got nothing else
(36:15):
do you I don't either, Um no, that's about it.
Or if you want to avoid this stuff altogether, you
do like me and don't ski? Yeah, no bad country
sports for you. Huh No, I mean I used to ski,
but I was never very good. And uh, once you
hit a certain age and you're not a great skier,
(36:35):
it's like, why why even go out there. I've got
a fifty percent chance of injuring myself. I would say
you'd probably have a higher percentage chance than that. You think, Yeah, man,
I took a I was in Vermont skiing one time
and I took a spill that It was sort of
like Chevy Chase and Christmas Vacation. I slid. I had
(36:58):
to have slid half a mile down this mountain without
being able to stop myself on my butt without my skis,
and a little twelve year old maybe snowboarder snowboarded down
with my skis. Stuck him in next to me and said, dude,
I've never seen someone slide that far in my life.
(37:20):
And he snowboarded off, and I said, well, you're pretty young,
but yeah, it was pretty entertaining to see. I'm sure,
and this is when I was younger. It would be
much funnier now even Oh yeah, you know, like when
the old guy falls, it's always funny. That's I mean,
like you said, Chevy Chase movies. I do have one
(37:41):
more thing, Chuck. It turns out the St. Bernard as
a mountain rescue dog with its whiskey your brandy cask
around its neck, supposedly as a myth like they did that.
They did have St. Bernard's in the Alps and all that,
and um, they did use them to like carry supplies
and stuff and sometimes even spirits around their neck, but
(38:02):
whatever uses like, they were never used as like ski
patrol avalanche rescue dogs. They were just in the same
area that avalanche has happened in a lot and they
just happen to have booze around their necks. I call
that confirmed. M all right, Well, just the popular conception
that is St. Bernard is going to run up to
you and dig you out and then yeah, yes, it's
(38:24):
not correct. It's a napoleonic lie. I am going to
say that has happened once, okay, because I want to
think it happened. It's pretty cool and St. Bernards are
cool dogs, to be sure. Uh, if you want to
know more about avalanches, like we said, if you're serious
about back country sports, you better go take a course.
You better go to the park services website on avalanches.
(38:46):
Get that beacon, dude, Yes, or else Josh Clark thinks
you're a dummy. Um. And you can also go to
how stuff works dot com and type in Avalanche in
the search bar there. And since I said all that,
that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna
call this defiling history. And this dude purposefully said, if
you read this, please don't show Josh because I I
(39:08):
want to hear his reaction. So here we go. Hey, guys,
I was listening to the Fourth of July Extravaganza from
a few years back, uh, and realized I might have
ruined a piece of American history a few years ago
about a thicker, older book, looking to hollow it out
so I could keep money and other important items in
there that I wanted, uh, that I didn't want to
(39:29):
keep in my personal safe. He's not. A few days ago,
I was listening to the part two of that Fourth
of July extravaganza and on the way back to University
of Wisconsin, Go Badgers, and I heard you talking about
the book Epic of America. Do you remember talking about that? Vaguely? Yes.
As we had guest hosts, we had Joe and Dazzo
(39:50):
and Wyatt Senac in Joe Garden and Halle Haglind so
they may have reference that book, but I don't remember that.
I knew that was the name of the book I
bought to hollow out, but thought, surely it wasn't the
same book. I got home, took a closer look, and
it turns out I was wrong. Upon further research, I
found I had bought a first edition, uh one bona
fide copy of Epic of America by James tres Low Adams,
(40:13):
and I cut a hole in the middle of it.
I thought it's somewhat ironic I chose to fill the
Epic of America with money. Nonetheless, I'm distraught with my
lack of knowledge and accidental disregard for one of the
great analyzes of the American dream, that is from Grant.
Hermit's here we go, Grant. That's this reaction, Grant indignation.
He's ticked. You know, we got um hollowed out books
(40:37):
from the guys who make Rick and Morty Yeah, adult swim, Yeah,
hollowed out to fit perfectly a flask, the Rick and
Morty flask. It was pretty neat. Thanks for that. Why
don't you get one of those? Grant and I thought
when I saw that book, I thought, well, that's neat.
They sent us a book and it was called like
interesting science stuff or something like that. I think it
(40:57):
was called boring Science. Of boring Science's ward people away
from the book. You want to want to read that
all right? Then you open it up and you're like, WHOA,
I've got it on my bar right now. That's awesome.
Where else would it be? I guess on my shelf.
You're at work, in your work bag with you at
all times. H If you want to tell us about
(41:22):
some bonehead thing you did with a piece of Americana
or anything else we want to hear about it, you
can tweak to us at s Y s K Podcast.
You can join us on our Facebook page at Facebook
dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send
us email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and
as always, hang out with us at our home on
the web, the Ill Chill Crib Stuff you Should Know
(41:43):
dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
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