Item: Close Call at the Burnie Glacier Chalet
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Title: Close Call at the Burnie Glacier Chalet
Proceedings: International Snow Science Workshop 2014 Proceedings, Banff, Canada
Authors:
- Christoph Dietzfelbinger [ Bear Mountaineering and the Burnie Glacier Chalet ]
Date: 2014-09-29
Abstract: Putting the large volume of available information in a structure that serves to keep an operation in its acceptable risk band is one of the key challenges in guiding. I attempt to illustrate where the problems can lie for a small organization. In February of 2010, I had a close call with my guests on a ski trip based out of the Burnie Glacier Chalet in the Coast Mountains of northwestern British Columbia. I remotely triggered a size 3.5 and a size 3 avalanche simultaneously on terrain I was considering for guiding. Since I had operated there for ten years at the time, and guided for over 35 years, I remain chastened by my failure to recognize the relevant problem that day. This was a 2 month old buried surface hoar layer which had led to an extensive cycle a month earlier. It had been well documented in January, but not tracked and described in February. This presentation analyzes the close call using Reason's Swiss Cheese model for my small organization. It explains the multiple failures at several levels of the operation, and what led to the conclusion of the incident without involvement. It integrates the technical aspects of observation, record keeping, and structured decision making with social and personal issues such as motivational bias on my part that can be found across the guiding industry. The presentation uses slides.
Object ID: ISSW14_paper_O11.04.pdf
Language of Article: English
Presenter(s):
Keywords: Reason's Model, confirmation and motivation bias, intuition, deep persistent weak layer, mindfulness.
Page Number(s): 314-320
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