Growing up in New Hampshire, he split his time between skiing and snowmobiling—pastimes that ultimately had him making the trek west to bigger mountains and bountiful amounts of snow. He ended up in Vail Colo. And while he still appreciates hitting the skintrack from time to time, he has focused his efforts in recent years on making sure mountain riders are as prepared for backcountry conditions as skiers. That’s why Duffy founded Avalanche 1, his organization dedicated to educating snowmobilers about proper avalanche safety protocol. We caught up with Duffy to learn more about why he thinks it’s so important to understand the differences between snow safety for skiers and mountain riders to better educate both groups in backcountry safety. Here’s what he had to say. -- BCA
The mindset of a snowmobiler and how they cover terrain is totally different from skiers. As a skier, you’re planning to reach your objective hours ahead of time. With a snowmobile, you’re there in minutes. The other thing is that typically, snowmobilers are a long way out there. You’re not getting mountain rescue or ski patrol in there right away if something goes wrong. You’re on your own and you have to rely on the people who you’re out in the backcountry with.
A snowmobile can put four to five times the stress on the snowpack as compared to a skier or snowboarder. When a snowmobile is sitting on the flat ground, the pounds per square inches of force on the snowpack is usually less than a skier, but when you start doing certain maneuvers, you’re putting four to five times the stress on the hill. Snowmobilers also cover more terrain than a skier, which is why there isn’t as much of a need to be energy efficient. This means that route finding looks very different between skiers and snowmobilers—and a machine can go anywhere. So when you’re snowmobiling, you’re not trying to be efficient skinning up a ridge. With a snowmobile, it’s up and down and all around—you can get anywhere within seconds. And with skiers, it’s mostly a top down approach for rescue. If someone gets caught in an avalanche, you ski down to do the rescue in most situations.
When accidents happen with snowmobiling, however, you’re usually parked at the bottom; someone tries to climb a hill and it avalanches, so you need to get up the hill to search. It’s a completely different approach from skiing and I’ve developed techniques using snowmobiles in avalanche rescue that allow us cut the time that skiers take by up to 80% because we’re using the snowmobiles to get up the hill followed by a top down approach and we can cover much more ground, faster on a snowmobile.
Bruce Edgerly and I, with the help of BCA, wrote a paper on this approach. One of my desires to produce this paper stemmed from people saying they hate snowmobiles and they don’t want to use snowmobiles in a rescue. We were like, “Wait, it’s a great tool.” BCA did a series of videos on snowmobile rescue techniques and I would say, 95% of the mountain rescue groups in the world, if not higher, don’t use these techniques because they don’t feel comfortable with snowmobiles—they stick to their old methods. One of my goals, is to get these techniques adopted to save more lives.
Another one of the differences between skiers and snowmobilers is that communication can be lacking with snowmobilers if they don’t have radios. When you’re skiing up you can feel the snow collapse. With snowmobiling, a lot of times you don’t feel that because you’re moving fast. So we have some tricks like stopping and jumping up and down on the running boards to see if you can get a collapse. You have to be more aware. Snowmobilers tend to not communicate as much as skiers, they’re not in close proximity. You can’t talk like you can when you’re skinning uphill.
Skiers are analyzing route selection the night before. They are analyzing when skinning up, when they get to the top, picking an island of safety when they’re skiing down. With snowmobilers, they’re analyzing on the fly with stability, trigger points, slope angle, run out, terrain traps. They’re doing everything on the fly and they’re doing it at a very fast pace.
So that’s another thing we’re trying to teach. As a snowmobiler, it doesn’t hurt to stop more often and talk things out with your group. That’s a big thing I’m trying to emphasize with snowmobile avalanche safety. When you stop and look around, you’re gaining insight on stability and make better decisions. Communicating with radios makes all the difference in the world.
You can’t teach snowmobilers the same way you teach skiers. They’re just different user groups. When I first started teaching, I’d work with instructors who were skiers, snowmobilers, and heli guides, and I’d tell them to watch the snowmobilers during avalanche rescue scenarios, they’ll kick the butt of any skier. And inevitably, we’d give snowmobilers rescue scenarios and the snowmobilers would do it in record time. And the skiers would look at me and say, “That’s unbelievable.” And I’m like, well, the user groups work differently. If someone falls skiing, they get themselves up. If someone gets a snowmobile stuck, everyone pitches in to help. It’s a team effort. And we always joke that snowmobilers are really good at digging. But most importantly, they’re really good at working as a team. We need to be aware of how groups act differently and how they travel differently. And that’s why I’m such a proponent of a different curriculum for different groups.