The personnel of an expedition of the character I proposed is a factor on which success depends to a very large extent. The men selected must be qualified for the work, and they must also have the special qualifications required to meet polar conditions. They must be able to live together in harmony for a long period without outside communication, and it must be remembered that the men whose desires lead them to the untrodden paths of the world have generally marked individuality.
To say nothing of the adventuresome women. What Shackleton knew as he planned his expeditions we all come to understand—it’s human factors, rather than technical skills, that are most important to the success, safety, and enjoyment of mountaineering, whether the endeavor is a roadside outing or a Himalayan expedition. You can make the summit but return from the outing discouraged about mountaineering, or you can fail but be elated and eager for more, all depending on the dynamics of the group you were with. It’s easy to focus on more tangible things, like tying knots and purchasing gear, and lose sight of the critical importance of what are called “soft skills,” such as risk management, judgment, cooperative problem solving, decision making, coping with fear, and leadership. Nevertheless, when mountaineers refer to personal growth, we’re talking about character, courage, and cooperation, not technical expertise.
The old-school term was “safety,” and the old-school approach was focused on maximizing safety. That didn’t work, because the concept is out of sync with reality. The reality is that risk can’t be completely eliminated—overcoming risk is an essential component of adventure—but risk can be managed. Risk management is first proactive and then, in an emergency, reactive. Experience and equipment may set your upper bounds, but it’s the quality of your decision making that allows you to operate safely within those bounds. The first step is recognizing hazards, which is why there’s an extensive section in this book on mountain objective or environmental hazards with enough detail to help in the next step: hazard analysis. People new to mountaineering tend to be naive about the presence and magnitude of objective hazards, particularly those that appear and disappear quickly, such as rockfall and avalanche. Such hazards manifest themselves so infrequently that climbers become overconfident of their ability to appraise and avoid hazards; then when a hazard does appear it’s assumed to be an unavoidable random act of nature. Not a good approach to decision making.
Decision making the way most of us learned it (the rational, analytical method: identify objectives, gather data, evaluate hypotheses, decide) doesn’t work well for mountaineers, even though popular books recommend it for that and just about every other context. In a wilderness setting the data are seldom certain or complete, and alternatives are not always apparent. Unacknowledged emotional motivations and desire for group approval can be more important than reaching a rational conclusion. Few people, no matter how well trained in the technique, actually use analytic decision making, especially when mountaineering and especially when decisions and plans of actions must be formulated by a group.
Instead, the most common means of decision making is simply to fixate on a principal aspect of the circumstances and apply a simple rule of thumb (a heuristic) derived from experience. This is a good method for making quick, simple decisions. You would hope that the smarter folks are, the more aspects they would consider, and the more complex would be the rules they apply. That’s the way it usually works, except in groups. A problem with applying rules of thumb is that, when applied to objective hazards, there isn’t the luxury of building up a history of progressive feedback that confirms successful decisions—feedback can be catastrophically fatal. This means you’ll want to learn from others who’ve analyzed the particular hazard and thoughtfully evaluated their personal close calls to produce a few teachable heuristics. This is why many climbers pore over Accidents in North American Mountaineering. Even so, it’s possible to use inappropriate rules of thumb for years without mishap. Absent thoughtful evaluation of whether your rules of thumb actually fit the circumstances, you can come to mistake your luck for wisdom.
The use of heuristics is common and has been studied extensively, with the identification of what are called heuristic traps—common causes of poor decision making. Familiarity is one such heuristic trap; it turns out that when circumstances are familiar, even though threatening, experienced and inexperienced mountaineers have about the same degree of successful decision making. It’s only when unfamiliar circumstances predominate that experience seems to be advantageous. Social proof is another trap and explains the notable failure of groups to make good decisions. After all, if others are continuing up as cumulous clouds build, it must be safe. Avoiding the social proof trap entails all the skills of group dynamics, cooperative problem solving, hazard assessment, decision making, and conflict resolution (so that decisions are based on objective criteria, not group hierarchies, interpersonal conflicts, wishful thinking, or denial). Another seductive trap that confounds good application of heuristics is scarcity. This causes mountaineers to compete for routes or summits while ignoring hazards, insufficient resources, or the deterioration of themselves or their group.
In the real world, neither analysis nor application of rules of thumb is effective in dealing with uncertain, ambiguous, or missing data, poorly defined and inconstant goals, and the stress of limited time and dire consequences, yet somehow good decisions are made under these conditions. Success is usually attributed to experience, but it actually comes from expertise, which is different. Experience doesn’t require thoughtfulness or training; expertise does. Experts often make decisions without realizing how they do it, but there are characteristics of their methodology. They size up the context and successively compare it to contexts they have experienced before; they are assessing the situation, not looking for response triggers. This means they must have personal or learned experience, but more importantly they must also understand the salient characteristics of that experience. Rather than attempt to shoehorn the situation to fit heuristics, they are critically attuned to characteristics that don’t fit their rules of thumb. Expert decision makers are focused on action, not analysis, so after running through their mental library of familiar, prototypical contexts, they pick one and make it work, rather than spending time analyzing and developing a perfect plan. Experts exhibit the wisdom of Hick’s Law, which says that the time to make a decision is proportional to the log of the number of alternatives; they know that examining more alternatives doesn’t impair the speed of decision making, but it certainly improves decision quality over fixating on a small number of familiar rules of thumb.
How can you improve your decision making? Hopefully, understanding how decision making works will help. Here are some specific suggestions for assembling your own rules of thumb. Rules of thumb should be formulated according to easily recognized trigger characteristics, and these triggers should be connected to specific actions. Your heuristics will become increasingly sophisticated if you proactively analyze the experience you accumulate. Construct your heuristics so that they’re specific and expressed in terms of positive action (not “when rappelling, don’t be unsafe,” instead: “always back up rappel anchors”). Focus your heuristics on the specific danger you intend to minimize, not on the entire activity. Look for characteristics of situations that appear to be exceptions to your rules of thumb. Broaden your expertise by thoughtfully reading or discussing actual scenarios where decision-making skills are highlighted—by their adroitness or by their lamentable absence. Be especially wary of the difficulty of making good decisions among a group of other mountaineers.
Group decisions can easily be inferior to decision making by individuals, particularly in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity. Decisions taken often have more to do with relationships within the group than with objective facts or accurate appraisal of consequences. The term “groupthink” was coined to describe the deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment that results from in-group pressures. Actively combat groupthink by encouraging dissenting opinions, having leaders express their views last, and playing devil’s advocate.
They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons, to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.
Easy for the Bard to say, but his butt wasn’t hanging over hundreds of feet of air with rockfall crashing all around. Fear is an important component of mountaineering; it tells us to marshal our resources, deal with the task at hand, and shut off that mind riot that’s clamoring for our attention. When you’re struck by fear, embrace it, because trying to deny fear or block it out will only consume energy you need for taking effective action. Think of adrenaline as a performance-enhancing drug, but be aware of the effects that fear has, physical and emotional, and deliberately compensate. You want to focus on the important issues before you, but you don’t want to let tunnel vision make you blind to easy solutions that may lie just outside your physical or mental field of vision. If fear is creating a sense of urgency, know that it’s probably inappropriate; the worst thing you can do is cut corners, fumble, or stumble trying to hurry when being deliberate and careful will save time in the long run.
I find that it helps me to categorize fear as rational, disproportionate, or nonspecific, each form demanding different coping strategies. Nonspecific fear can come at any time—in the parking lot or on the climb. When it strikes, you’re overcome by dread for no reason, at least not a reason you can identify. If the feeling doesn’t resolve itself by stopping and trying to relax, there’s no point in continuing—you’ll only find ways to equivocate, procrastinate, and otherwise guarantee failure. Everyone experiences inertia or hesitation from time to time, but if you find yourself overwhelmed by genuine stark terror without tangible cause, bailing is your only option. You won’t be the first.
Disproportionate fear describes being irrationally fearful of something that should elicit only caution or concern. Sometimes you can talk yourself through it by reminding yourself that you’ve done this before or that you’re following a sensible course of action. Don’t try to talk yourself out of your fear by trivializing the circumstances or minimizing the consequences (or by false bravado). Don’t force yourself to go ahead until you’ve resolved whatever is making you afraid, unless there’s no other option and no one else around who can help you out, physically or mentally. I prefer, when confronting disproportionate fear, to do something tangible, such as place additional protection even if it isn’t necessary, or to go through a safety check to reassure myself that I’m not overlooking something crucial. After all, irrational fear can be your wise self pointing out that your smart self has overlooked something, or is about to—listen to what your fear is trying to tell you. In other words, broaden your awareness. Disproportionate fear can be minimized by adhering to a personal set of safety principles and protocols; in Chapter 14, Climbing on Rock, I mentioned the mutual safety check climbers perform on each other at the start of every roped climb, and in Chapter 13, Rappelling, a protocol for conducting safe rappels. Every person who deals with complex, dangerous systems relies on protocols rather than inventiveness to minimize hazard. If you’re sure your protocols are sound and you haven’t cut corners, you can be more confident that your fear is indeed out of proportion.
Rational fear is the accurate perception that bad things could happen and will, unless you act competently. This is when you must ignore extraneous factors and focus on the task at hand. If that task is making a difficult, exposed move, don’t dwell on the anchor below or the wind or your belayer’s attentiveness—make the move. You should already have dealt with the other factors, and you should have skills in reserve you can call upon—in this example that could be your ability to down-climb or your willingness to hang on your anchors. Even in situations where you have little apparent control, you must avoid panic and use every bit of your skill and strength to bring the danger and fear down to manageable levels. You’ll be successful, and you’ll become stronger and more confident as a result.
Leadership doesn’t mean going on an outing and inviting others to keep up if they can. Competent leadership is essential to effective risk management, though on many outings there isn’t a requirement for a formal leader. Participants are nominally equals and have comparable levels of skills; they mutually agree on objectives and style (aggressive or casual) and the degree of commitment expected of everyone. Participants must communicate clearly to head off conflicts and disappointment, because the nominal objective (a summit, for example) is only one of potentially many personal objectives among the group. Participants need to be aware of informal rules, such as what will be done if someone chooses not to continue or becomes lost. Responsibility for safety of the party is shared, if unspoken, and no structured leadership is required so long as things go well.
As an informal party of companions reaches mileposts in the outing, leaders may emerge by consensus, based on appropriate expertise, with the leadership function assumed by the most technically competent group member, changing as circumstances change. The person who proposed the objective and secured the permits may defer to someone who has been in the area before to lead the approach, another who is skilled on snow may be the first up the glacier, and a third may become the rope gun on technical rock. There are other contextual styles of leadership: teacher, mentor, motivator, expert, all the way to guide—the position of absolute authority and responsibility.
When all is going well, seemingly little leadership is needed. Reality is more complex. That things are going well indicates effective leadership has already taken place. When problems arise, it’s most often due to previous lapses in leadership, particularly procrastination in addressing a deterioration of group dynamics.
Being a part of a successful group is one of the joys of mountaineering; it also makes for more effectiveness. The military has long known that soldiers will perform far beyond their personal norms if they feel their performance is important to and recognized by their group; performance falls far below norm with impaired group cohesion. How do you create a sense of group identity? Most important is a constant, consistent, and obvious policy of inclusion. It helps to celebrate success in terms of accomplishment by the group; I have a friend who’s always shouting, “¡Lo hicimos!” (We did it!), and, ya know, it’s kind of infectious. As important as the nominal objectives of the group are, participants always have unspoken personal objectives that they associate with the objectives of the outing; this provides individual motivation and a sense of personal accomplishment. Everyone, leaders and participants alike, has emotional needs that are uniquely associated with tangible accomplishments that may or may not be among the identified objectives of the outing. Each person is striving to reach personal milestones; these should be recognized and celebrated by other members of the group.
Maintaining an appropriate pace is probably the single most important action for promoting group cohesion. Also on the list would be setting out a few understandings ahead of time, such as what will be done with a party member who drops out before the summit, whether the group will remain together until back at the trailhead and all cars are started, and what will be done if someone becomes lost. A group is a collection of people with common objectives, and a team is a group with common values. Alpinists share many values; a good place to start expressing them and building your team is by modeling environmentally conscientious behavior, such as Leave No Trace practices.
This section discusses leadership, but in a sense each person is his or her own leader. Every leader hopes that each member of the party will exhibit effective personal leadership by setting high but achievable personal goals, taking responsibility for personal and group objectives, showing willingness to go beyond personal comfort zones and be exposed to growth, interacting constructively with others in the group, and accepting assignments and carrying them out cooperatively and effectively should an emergency arise.
There’s one context in which the style of leadership ceases to be optional: an emergency incident. Emergencies arise when the force of human factors (planning, skill, leadership, judgment, communication, physical conditioning) is overwhelmed by environmental hazards (weather, terrain, rockfall, avalanche, equipment faults). Dealing effectively with emergencies demands that a single person step forward and assume a directive style of leadership to orchestrate all the party’s resources. That means clearly stating messages using “I” language (“Dave, I need you to …”), by making messages complete and specific with congruent verbal and nonverbal delivery, and by emphasizing importance with redundancy. To ensure the directions are understood, a leader uses body language that communicates attentiveness to the person being addressed and asks for feedback about how her messages are being received. The leader must be able to remain calm and manage others under stressful conditions but may not be the party member with the most advanced technical skills, such as first aid or navigation. The emergency response leader must see to the safety and security of the rescuers as well as other party members who may be emotionally affected by the emergency, even if they weren’t physically involved, or even physically present.
It’s out of the scope of this book to present an adequate treatment of every emergency response, although Chapter 25 goes into some detail discussing self-rescue—an emergency response to a climbing accident—and Chapter 26 discusses responses to crevasse falls. In the wilderness firstaid course you’re signed up for you’ll learn a protocol for emergency medical response. Every emergency response relies on specific, step-by-step protocols that are similar across a variety of emergency incidents. In terms of leadership, all response protocols include the following steps:
Designate an overall leader/manager who takes charge.
Ensure that others, rescuers or bystanders, are not endangered.
Size up the scene in terms of the response required (search for lost person, administer first aid, etc.), victims involved, hazards present, and available resources. The leader will make sure everyone is accounted for.
Formulate a response plan based on the nature of the emergency and communicate it to everyone involved, including any victims.
Assign responsibilities to members of the party and require them to report their progress to the leader, who will balance resources to ensure objectives are met.
After an emergency incident, when your party gets its feet back on the ground, it will be faced with a triage: continue, delay, or retreat. If you’re dealing with a medical emergency, you’ll be faced with the decision to request outside assistance, either from other mountaineers, from a SAR team on the ground, or in the form of a helicopter rescue.
There’s a lamentable increase in backcountry travelers relying on calls to outside agencies for rescue, along with a lessened perceived importance of parties’ ability to conduct their own self-rescue and administer first aid, sometimes even to apply common sense. Calling for rescue works in the Alps, but in many mountain areas of North America rescue can be far away or unavailable. Even where it’s available, rescue can be significantly delayed by environmental factors or by resources that are preoccupied with another incident. It’s always expensive and frequently exposes rescuers to danger, so requesting outside assistance should be considered carefully. Calling for outside assistance may be your only option if a companion has been injured with a mechanism for spinal injury, and no one in your party knows how to rule it out; without a backboard carry, you’re taking a chance that transporting the patient could cause serious and permanent additional injury. If you’ve ever practiced evacuation using a Stokes litter, you know how difficult and time consuming it is, and you’ll have certainly come away with a valuable lesson: don’t volunteer to be the “victim.” A litter evac is not to be taken lightly, and a necessarily improvised litter makes it many times worse.
If you do carry communications equipment as backup for your group’s self-rescue competence, or even with the thought of using it to confirm your safety and avoid an unneeded SAR response, you’ll want to determine in advance that you can connect. The availability and response time of rescuers should be factored into your decisions, so you should research this information in advance, too, particularly if you’re in a position of leadership. Rescues or flights at night are usually forbidden by SAR rules. Cell phone coverage in mountainous areas is spotty. I once accompanied a ski mountaineer in a long line rescue by a helicopter that was summoned with an FRS radio call that was received over 100 miles away—but I wouldn’t count on FRS or GMRS for rescue.
The PLB is a pocket-sized, 1-pound transmitter, a scaled-down version of those used by boaters and pilots for years. Thirty-six nations, including European countries, Russia, Canada, and Australia have adopted the system. Each PLB is equipped with a unique identifying code tied to the registrant’s personal information. The position of an activated PLB is communicated to a base station by a complex satellite system within a 2-mile radius on the first satellite pass and to within a half-mile radius within three satellite passes, which occur about every 40 minutes. The time to notify a local SAR authority is about 45 minutes. At the same time, SAR will be monitoring with a tracking device to home in on a second signal put out by the PLB. Some PLB models have provisions to attach a GPS (global positioning system) receiver, and some even have built-in GPS receivers; these will broadcast the user’s GPS location within a 100-meter radius on the first satellite pass (so, no, they won’t work as avalanche beacons).
There’s no question that PLBs will be used in non-emergency situations by persons who are overextended and who have the resources for selfrescue but fail to utilize them. PLBs will be activated by stranded motorists, confused Boy Scouts, and hunters low on bourbon. Such situations already cause the bulk of calls for SAR rescue; PLBs may increase such calls but will also make victim location easier for SAR squads.
You might think that PLBs could be ignored by mountaineers or at least treated like cell phones for emergency calls (except that PLBs appear to avoid reception problems), making their use a personal decision. But think again. PLBs are beginning to be required on Oregon mountains to escape rescue fees.
Helicopters are the most expensive and dangerous rescue technology available. Medical rescue helicopters are especially accident-prone, and wilderness search and rescue is the most dangerous job a civilian helicopter pilot faces. When you meet rescue helicopter pilots in the line of work, you’ll be blown away by their competence and bravery—so don’t expose them to risk by summoning them unnecessarily. In the event you may be involved in a helicopter rescue, you should have a basic understanding of how things work.
From a distance it may appear that helicopters can just fly anywhere they choose, but it’s much more complicated, particularly at altitude and close to the surface. When the rescue helicopter spots you, the pilot will look for a landing spot. Pilots prefer to land into the wind with some forward speed; dropping straight down from a hovering position is a difficult maneuver. Pilots also prefer to take off into the wind. It’s surprisingly difficult to spot poles and wires from the air, so avoid suggesting any areas that have such obstacles. Avoid brushy areas or places where there are stumps more than a foot high. It’s also difficult to determine ground winds from the air in mountainous areas; you can help by hanging the strip of surveyor’s tape in your ten essentials from your trekking pole so that the pilot can see it during the approach.
Flying in mountainous areas is problematic for several reasons. The less dense air at altitude reduces lift; warm air also lowers air density and reduces lift, plus it increases turbulence. Pilots may prefer to fly in mountains only in the cool of the morning, depending on the capabilities of their aircraft and its load. Mountain air is notably turbulent, particularly over ridges and in the lee of crests, so pilots may reject such areas for close flying. When a helicopter is close (about a rotor diameter) to flat ground, it gets an important extra boost of lift from ground effect; sharp ridges provide no ground effect. Landing on slopes is difficult and requires the pilot to constantly modulate the controls to maintain stability; avoid even gentle slopes as pickup sites. Pilots are increasingly unwilling to attempt toe-in or one-skid landings (hovers, really) on slopes because it’s exceptionally difficult to keep the helicopter stable as cargo weight changes. Instead, rescuers will be lowered, and able victims will be raised using a horse collar on a wire cable. I can assure you that being long-lined off a steep mountain face is a thrilling experience, because you immediately swing out over hundreds of feet of air, suspended by only your armpits; then you swing back toward the slope and the rescuers. Injured victims are winched up in litters. Particularly in Canada, a fixed-length line is used to drop a rescuer and equipment near victims on precarious terrain, even fifth-class terrain; it’s pretty amazing watching a guy in an orange jump-suit swinging thousands of feet in the air under a small helicopter. The rescuer alights, unhooks, and prepares the victim by putting him in a sack; then the helicopter returns, and both the rescuer and victim are hooked up and carried to a location from which they can be further evacuated. Sling rescue procedures expose the rescuer, pilot, and victim to considerable danger, so it’s a method of last resort.
Another hazard for helicopter pilots is the difficulty of estimating distance above snow-covered ground. If your pickup spot is snow covered, especially if the snow is loose, try to leave loaded packs, skis, or logs to help the pilot’s depth perception; even boot prints will help. Stand where the pilot can see you, but well clear of the LZ (landing zone), and be prepared for the hurricane of detritus or snow driven by the 100 mph winds created by the helicopter as it approaches (Chinooks, the big ones with two rotors, are even worse). In general, climbers involved in a helicopter rescue should all be crouching together near the victim, well away from where the helicopter will be landing, preferably in view of the pilot. Protect the victim from the wind blast and secure all small items that will otherwise be blown away. Remove hats with brims or bills, and put on your sunglasses or goggles.
Anytime a rescue team appears, in a helicopter or otherwise, the incident commander will take over all leadership responsibilities. Only approach the helicopter when you are specifically directed to do so and from a direction forward of amidships where the pilot can see you; the pilot may decide to reorient the aircraft before anyone gets on or off. Never approach from the rear of the helicopter, even if you think that’s what you’ve been told to do (unless it’s a Chinook, which has its entrance door in the rear). Keep your head down, carry your pack and any other items low and in front of you, and be especially wary of skis and poles, which should be lashed into a single unit and carried low. Even though your head is down, keep your eyes on the pilot. If a horse collar or litter is lowered from a hovering helicopter, allow it hit the ground and discharge any static electricity before touching it or the person in it.
Rescue teams may use hand signals to communicate with helicopter pilots because radios can be ineffective in the roar of the engine and rotor (don’t plan on verbal communication when a helicopter is near, including a chat with the rescuers). Unless you’re familiar with these hand signals, keep your hands by your side. For example, the “wave off” signal to tell a pilot that she should move away rather than land is crossing your hands above your head, à la Village People; that’s also how many people would attempt to attract the pilot’s attention. Another useful hand signal is to stand just outside the landing zone with your back to the wind and your arms extended straight in front in the direction of the LZ; the pilot will interpret this as an indication of the wind direction and your awareness of her presence. Beyond this, the pilot will probably ignore any signals from someone with whom she isn’t familiar.