one of the neat things about that program is that it shows this through the experiences of some of these really extreme athletes, who have much more skill and experience but also more risk tolerance than the vast majority of people. one of the episodes i saw featured Travis Rice, a pro snowboarder who does descents on steep Alaskan faces, and how he got himself into an avalanche. he seems to expect that what he's doing is going to occasionally trigger an avalanche, but relies on his speed and skills to get out of it (he basically says at one point "an avalanch is only a problem if you're going slower than it"). he also describes factors that play into his risk assessment, like possible terrain traps, escape routes, testing snow quality etc.Jorts wrote: ↑Thu Sep 15, 2022 7:35 amThat's one of the most difficult things as a backcountry user to gauge whether skiing or solo scrambling. Humans generally have a tendency to underestimate risk because of the positive feedback loop bias (e.g. I've skied this dozens of times and it never slid, I must be making the right decisions). It helps to look at things through the "what if" lens to counteract that unconscious bias. I'm confident this will not slide but if it did, how big would it go? Would it funnel into a terrain trap or fan out on the apron? If there was rockfall, how exposed am I?
and yet, on this particular day he ignored a lot of that. he skipped a snow test that would have sent snow cascading down the face beforehand, because the face was so pristine looking, he didn't want to mess it up for the video they were recording (demonstrating it's not just ignorant influencers who take excess risk "doing it for the gram"). they're schedule had been delayed by storms so when they finally got a good weather day, they rushed to take advantage of it and underestimated the amount and quality of new snow on the mountain. and during the descent, when the face cracks on him, he didn't have a safe escape route on his left that he hoped for, and ended getting caught in the avalanche. he was very lucky to be able to get out of it with minimal injury.
it's one of my favorite bits of his. like so much of Carlin's material, it's super funny on the surface, but also says something deeper about human nature.