Before you set out on what will undeniably be an amazing hike for the winter, research will be your best friend in making sure that you come out of the hike in one piece and with a lot of stories to tell, rather than being found buried under a pile of snow thanks to carelessness.
One such aspect that you will be researching about are potential hazards that you will be encountering on the trail. After all, it isn’t uncommon to encounter potential obstacles, expected or unexpected, while already in the middle of a trail.
However, winter cranks things up a notch. While some usual hazards that hikers encounter, such as wild animal encounters, are mitigated if not outright eliminated, winter also presents new ones that can range from annoying, to painful, to deadly.
In this case, we will be talking about the avalanche, which brings chills down the spine of anyone who experienced such a thing and lived to tell the tale. Pun intended.
What is an avalanche?
An avalanche is a large mass of snow that rapidly slides down an inclined slope, usually a mountain.
While they are mostly made up of snow and originate from snow, they can easily pick up objects in their way, such as ice, rocks, and twigs. Avalanches that are particularly powerful and fast can even uproot dead trees, bushes, and signs.
This can make them very dangerous, not just because of the high speed of collision potentially burying you under the snow, but also because of the amount of debris that an avalanche might have accumulated over its journey.
You can think of an avalanche as the snow version of a landslide: Simply replace the soil or mud from a landslide with snow and you’ve got yourself an avalanche. Both are very dangerous.
How does an avalanche form?
Avalanches, being primarily snow, means that they can only come from areas that have a large amount of snow.
To have the potential danger of moving in the first place, these masses of snow need to be located on a sloped surface.
Eventually, the snow builds up, leading to a thicker blanket of snow in the area. And if you’ve ever played a game of Jenga before, you would know that a tall structure (the mass of snow increasing in size) that loses its platform (the ground) becomes more unstable little by little. Eventually, it becomes so unstable that even a light tap is enough to cause a domino effect to cause the entire thing to spill.
Generally, the snow is left at that, which is ideally left undisturbed. It is still unstable but staying away makes it pose less of a threat, at least until it starts melting, which is around after winter has passed.
Huge avalanches that bulldoze their way through slopes aren’t the only avalanches in existence, there are also small slides of powdery snow of it called “sluffs”. This type of avalanche happens when the unstable layer of snow is located at the top. This type of avalanche is also commonly triggered by people who are doing outdoor activities, such as skiing and hiking.
As avalanches occur in sloped areas, that means mountains are a prime hotspot for avalanche incidents, but it’s not unheard of for a smaller version of it to occur on the roofs of large houses, dropping onto unsuspecting people below.
How are avalanches triggered?
There are two ways to trigger an avalanche:
Manmade, which are indirect or direct actions by a person on the snow that cause a chain reaction on the snow from the top, going all the way to the bottom. Such actions usually involve traveling over the weak snow, causing the unstable part to break off and start sliding down.
Natural, which, as the name suggest, comes from natural forces, such as precipitation, temperature changes, intense winds, and changes in the weather.
A specific slope is also needed for the avalanche to gain momentum. Generally, a 30-degree incline minimum is needed for an avalanche to gain momentum fast, though they are very frequent occurrences for 35-50-degree slopes.
Why avalanches are dangerous
As mentioned earlier, when an avalanche starts, it goes down really fast. And I mean really fast. These things can reach up to speeds of 100 mph, as fast as a car travelling on a freeway!
It also means that you really don’t want to be in the general direction of an avalanche, because you’re not going to be outrunning that, even if you had a horse to gallop you down the mountain.
If you get swept up, you can be heavily injured if you happen to crash into a sturdy object that is in the way, but hasn’t been swept up by the snow, such as a large tree.
But that’s not even getting to the worst part. At the end of it all, you can end up buried alive, and if the snow is too thick, you will be under the mercy of the snow and can only hope that a rescue party can attend to you as soon as possible.
The longer that you stay under, the slimmer your chance of survival. People can survive for at least 15 minutes under the snow, before suffocation starts kicking in, as there is a lack of oxygen but an abundance of carbon dioxide in the area.
How to stay safe from an avalanche
Do your research on your hiking trails. Most trails will be closed if they have an avalanche warning, but it’s important to be aware of trails that might be open but still have the chance of avalanche occurrences to ensure that you are prepared and know what to expect.
Ensure that your information is as recent as possible, as snow might have formed without your knowledge on a mountain trail without your knowledge.
Finally, try not to go hiking just immediately after a snowstorm. There will be a lot of snow on mountain trails thanks to the storm, making them a prime example of an avalanche just waiting to happen.