Washington Trails
Association
Trails for everyone, forever
Washington Trails
AssociationTrails for everyone, forever
Whether you’ve been adventuring for a few days or a few decades, you can always learn more about staying safe. By Loren Drummond
When you head into the backcountry, it can be easy to think that the individual decisions you make along the way will keep you safe. According to Tammy VuPham, an avalanche educator and mountain guide trainer with Alpine Ascents International, the key to staying safe in the outdoors starts with understanding human behavior and the outdoor culture we create as a community.
Tammy recently took the stage at the Northwest Snow and Avalanche Workshop, a gathering of leading avalanche professionals in North America. She made the case that understanding your own relationship to risk and creating positive group dynamics can help create a culture of safety for managing potential dangers and making decisions in the backcountry.
According to Tammy, mitigating risk in the outdoors, for both beginner and seasoned winter recreators, mitigating risk in the backcountry starts with introspection. You need to understand your risk tolerance in the backcountry. You also have to understand why you’re out there in the first place.
Tammy VuPham (center) leading a course on snow safety. Photo by Angela Crampton, SheJumps.
Before you head out, Tammy suggests asking yourself: What are my objectives? What am I looking to get out of this trip? Is it more knowledge-gathering or is it a fitness trip?
In addition to a group debrief, Tammy also suggests doing a mental debrief after every adventure, too. Tammy recommends a personal debrief as one of the most powerful tools for individuals of all experience levels to make better backcountry decisions. Here’s how it works:
Back at the trailhead or parking lot, or even on your drive home, ask yourself questions like: What did I do well today? Did anything make me feel unsafe? How did I respond? How can I improve?
“Personal reflection and introspection are really important to our self-growth, no matter your number of years doing this. We have to keep learning. We have to keep growing, or the snow will come to get us. If you don’t do this introspection, how will you know how small your margin was to an accident?” Tammy said.
Knowing yourself will also help you trust your intuition and speak up when something feels off, which is critical when adventuring in groups. Group dynamics can be tricky to navigate, especially outside of a class setting or when you might not know everyone else’s experience level. To avoid a bad experience within a group, use caution and trust your intuition.
“I think it’s really important to listen to that voice,” she said. “No matter how much time you spend in the backcountry, you really need to trust that you’re already a good decision-maker because you make decisions for yourself and your people all the time.”
That’s especially true when you identify as part of a community or gender identity traditionally underrepresented in outdoor recreation. As a climber, Vietnamese-American and Southerner-turned-skier who moved to the Northwest for a change of scenery, Tammy still occasionally feels like an outsider in the industry, despite her role as an outdoor education professional.
“I, like a lot of people, moved to Washington, and like a lot of other people growing up as an immigrant, saw snow for the first time when I moved to Washington,” she said.
Tammy emphasizes the importance of staying aware that newer group members or those who don’t have much experience in the outdoors might be well beyond their psychological safety zone. Other group members should make sure to listen to their needs. And if you’re new, speak up, even if it takes courage. Remember, your perspective as a person who is newer to the activity is valuable, too.
“The beauty of having a mixed-expertise group is that you have those fresh perspectives. Folks who are brand new can be extremely important because they can point out things you haven’t observed or have taken for granted, no matter how many times you have done that route or trail,” Tammy said.
A practical way to ensure all voices are heard is to make sure that everyone who spends time together in the backcountry helps make the plan. Go beyond checking conditions or route planning. Get on the same page about what everyone wants to get out of the trip and about individual risk tolerances. Understand the people and personal dynamics likely to play out in decision-making. If people feel like they have a say in what goes on, they are more likely to speak up if they feel something is off.
If human behavior is at the core of managing risk, we all have a role to play in creating a community that makes better decisions in the backcountry.
“Alpinism, mountaineering and backcountry skiing — it’s really about the people and the community,” Tammy said. “I am really a strong believer, based on my professional experiences and observing people in the outdoors, that all of us have a part to play in a culture we want to see outside.”
Beginners and experienced alpinists both need to keep learning new skills and evaluating how risks can be influenced by climate change, technology or even the increasing popularity of winter sports.
“Even as a professional, I have to go recertify, and every time I take a new course, I learn new practices,” Tammy said. “For backcountry people who have been in this a while, are you making new goals at the start of each season to maybe learn a new snow science concept, to maybe learn about climate change and how it affects the Pacific Northwest snowpack?”
Perhaps most importantly, Tammy wants folks recreating to think about how they’re passing along and sharing the knowledge they’re acquiring. How are you positively feeding the systems that keep us all safer? Some ideas: Mentor others, submit a weather observation to NWAC or write a trip report for WTA.
“Knowledge is power and even the first-timer after their first winter hike now has the knowledge to share their learnings,” Tammy said.
Everyone has the power to mitigate risk and seed a culture of safety. Do the personal work, attune to each other, give back and the culture spirals out from there.
The culture you build together in the backcountry can have ripple effects. Photo by Thomas Bergeron
