The “considerable” rating can lull backcountry users into complacency. Photo: Unsplash
A study of 1,643 individuals critically buried in avalanches between 1981 and 2024 has found that both survival rate and rescue response time have increased 10 percent and 45 percent respectively. Both data points are positive markers in avalanche safety as backcountry skiing and snowboarding have grown in popularity throughout that same period and inbound avalanches remain a serious hazard around the world.
“Up until 1990, 43.5 percent of buried victims survived; now, it’s 53.5 percent,” said Simon Rauch, the study’s lead author and an emergency physician at Eurac Research, based in the northern Italian town of Bolzano..
A major improvement in rescue response time is at least one easy explanation for the overall increase in survival rate throughout the four-decade study period, with rescue time averaging 45 minutes in the 1980s and now up to just 25 minutes in recent years. Survival rate is at 91 percent when a critically buried person (head and chest covered in snow) is rescued within the first 10 minutes. Once the rescue time falls between 10 and 30 minutes, however, survival rates dropped to just 31 percent.
One intriguing finding in the research, which was published in JAMA Network Open, showed a significant rise in survival rates for victims buried more than 130 minutes. That rate increased from 2.6 percent in the 1980s to 7.3 percent now, which can speak to advancements in treatments and care for things like hypothermia.
“Time is the critical factor, and 10 minutes is not long. Therefore, it’s essential to understand that the survival chances in an avalanche burial are three times higher when excursion companions are able to dig out the victims, rather than when organized rescue teams are involved,” Rauch said.
A survey of avalanche deaths in the U.S. this past winter showed that avalanche fatalities were well below the 20-year average in 2023-2024. Year-to-year statistics can vary wildly though. The 2020-2021 winter saw the most avalanche deaths in the United States with 37 total. Seventeen of those were skiers. On the other end of the spectrum, the 1990 and 1991 winters were the last years there were fewer than 10 avalanche deaths, according to Statista.
