Senior Editor
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The Inertia

There’s nothing like Travis Rice writhing in pain at the bottom of a big slope to make you ponder your yet-to-be-made decisions this winter in the backcountry. Rice was filming in AK for that movie you’ve probably heard he’s in by now (The Fourth Phase). His team released this cut to promote avy awareness. Rice was riding a terrain trap in AK when the slope he was on gave away and sent him over a cliff. The slab wasn’t huge, just a bit more than sluff, but it still took him off his feet and knocked the wind out of him.

The commentary is pretty epic from his peers: you can die in a small avalanche on gnarly terrain, or a big avalanche on not-so-gnarly terrain says Jeremy Jones. You can get buried in a small slab avy in Alaska, or on any other slope anywhere in the world adds Kirk Birkeland, a Forest Service forecaster. Slides kill 300 people each year. All good things to know. But here’s the bottom line: people who do this for a living have to push it because, as Rice admits, the face looked sexy for film (and the film has to look rad or no one will watch it). And they didn’t give it enough time after the storm to let the snow settle (48 hours is optimal, at the least). But as we’ve seen over and over again, professionals don’t always have that luxury. Rice was lucky.

You, me, the guy down the street, we don’t have to push it like that. We can ride relatively steep, fun trees for a week before we even sniff open slopes over 35 degrees. That’s the luxury of not having to worry about the film crews’ time, the guides’ time, or the heli time. Us regular schmucks can just enjoy the backcountry—without pressure.

So I guess that means us normal peeps really have no excuses. We should always make good decisions in the BC, right? Perhaps the best bit in this piece came from Trent Meisenheimer of Know Before You Go when referencing those 300 deaths: “That’s not just some number. That’s somebody’s child, spouse, sibling or parent. We need to come together and make a change.” Because the bulk of those deaths aren’t professionals. They’re people like you. And me.

Check out Know Before You Go for information on avalanche safety and awareness.

 
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