Personal Responsibility
A couple of incidents in the last few days have highlighted for me the issue of personal responsibility.
Incident 1:
On Christmas Day I was enjoying my second run off top of the Brevent. Category 3 day on 35 degree terrain in the company of one of my neighbours. Fully tooled up with transceivers, shovels and probes, we were taking it nice and steady. On the traverse to the Hotel Face, two reps for a well-known British ski package company with no packs passed us. I mentioned to one of them that it might be a good idea to be equipped, to which the response was: “I’ve got a transceiver but I left my ABS at home today because I didn’t expect to be skiing off piste”.
Incident 2:
Fast forward to a visit to Crans Montana on the 28th December, and the front cover of Le Matin, a local Valais newspaper, caught my eye. A family of 4 were avalanched on the south face of Mont Gelé in Verbier , with no transceivers, shovels or probes and (according to the head of safety at Téléverbier), no idea that they were doing anything unsafe.
In typical tabloid fashion, this escalates into a debate as to whether off piste skiers involved in avalanches should pay extra for their rescues, over and above any private insurance premium they might already have paid. According to a spokesperson for Suva quoted in Le Matin, the average cost to the insurance company of an avalanche incident is 50,000 Swiss francs.
To me, the debate isn’t really about that- all we have to do is look at the two pictures published in the paper of folk crossing the line in Verbier. On the cover, a tourer is stepping the fences at the top of Mont Fort. On the inside page, a boarder ducks a rope somewhere in Verbier. Aside from what they have on their feet, there’s one striking difference in the two shots - what they have on their backs.
In one, the person may have taken some personal responsibility by equipping themselves correctly for off piste terrain. In the other, they haven’t. And remember, there’s no such thing as a little bit off piste. It’s like being pregnant – you either are, or you’re not. And once you cross that line, you most definitely are…
Happy New Year, and happy hors-piste.
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