Excessive Conservatism

Most of the conversations in the Slide Zone revolve around excessive risk-taking. Excessive conservatism is the other side of the coin, and it can be dangerous as well, especially when it:

* leads someone to the unwarranted belief that they possess a significant degree of control in a given situation.
* leads someone to see hazards that are not real at the expense of hazards that are real.
* leads someone to make choices that put them into more dangerous situations.
* leads someone to focus entirely on the current situation rather than situations that may arise in the immediate future.
* leads someone to excessive risk-taking out of desperation.
* creates psychological instability in a group.

According to The Avalanche Handbook, risk is unacceptable if there is a significant chance of triggering a Size 2 avalanche. The recommended practise is making decisions that are "neither too conservative, nor too risky", as this is "generally compatible with realistic human behaviour".

* Have you ever felt like you were being too conservative?
* What do you view as "unacceptable consequences"?
* Has excessive conservatism ever caused you to make poor decisions?
* What is your personal idea of well-balanced risk?

( Paging HomeMadeSalsa, Bunion, Summit, LeeLau, GnarWhale, Unemployed et al! )

I am too conservative to work out if I am in the et al category ;)

This is a problem:

* creates psychological instability in a group.

Especially when the kneejerk conservatism is based on irrational tendencies rather than a critical assessment of the slope. Even if they were right, it was by chance, not through applying a structured and consistent method of assessment. So in the end, they learn nothing other than:

* leads someone to the unwarranted belief that they possess a significant degree of control in a given situation.

The most positive manner of dealing with this is to lead by example and apply a structured and consistent method of assessment to a given slope so that the overly-conservative member can build confidence in method, rather than head-in-the-sand fear as a way of managing risk.

cheers,
et al

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Originally Posted by CookieMonster

* leads someone to see hazards that are not real at the expense of hazards that are real.
* leads someone to make choices that put them into more dangerous situations.
* leads someone to focus entirely on the current situation rather than situations that may arise in the immediate future.
* leads someone to excessive risk-taking out of desperation.
* creates psychological instability in a group.

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WOW! Great key points! Thanks for making this thread!

Hyperfocusing on the management of non-priority risks is what leads people to accept other real risks instead. It sure as heck gets the group dynamic focused on the wrong thing!

Many people have difficulty prioritizing in general. Prioritizing requires a certain type of thinking that requires both the proper mindeset and practice! In the backcountry, it is easy to get concerns out of order. Everyone does this, particularly the inexperienced. Experience helps clear up priorities, but experience can be a bad teacher too.

I think a unique time excessive conservatism occurs is when plans must change or become time sensitive due to prior accidents (equipment failure, unexpected delays, injury, etc etc etc). Many people have a problem reprioritizing when expediency is required. It's all the harder anytime you add: fatigue, cold, hunger, increasing responsibilities...

Nice one, Cookie Monster.

Not time to answer fully right now, but you hit a good note with this one. I see this a lot with less experienced people. In the outdoor ed world it's called "radical conservatism," and it leads to undermining of the system for decision-making.

I wasn't invited but here is my opinion. Like everyone touched on experience. Ok to take the classes and learn basic avalanche skills. But until you actually get the time in the snow and see things go down in real life you really do not have a true understanding. So it is hard to say if something is excessive conservatism or just not experienced enough to understand the cause and affect of their decisions.
My idea of well balanced risk is stopping at the point where my experience tells me this is going from excitement to fear which could lead to unacceptable consequences.
Yes I have made decisions that were to conservative but it only cost me a line I wanted or a summit.

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Originally Posted by BFD

I wasn't invited but here is my opinion. Like everyone touched on experience. Ok to take the classes and learn basic avalanche skills. But until you atually get the time in the snow and see things go down in real life you really do not have a true understanding. So it is hard to say if something is excessive conservatism or just not experienced enough to understand the cause and affect of their decisions.
My idea of well balanced risk is stopping at the point where my experience tells me this is going from excitement to fear which could lead to unacceptable consequences.
Yes I have made decisions that were to conservative but it only cost me a line I wanted or a summit.

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Thanks to everyone for the data so far. *Everyone* is invited to give an opinion, so thanks BFD.

( I paged some people specifically because of their professional backgrounds, experience, or both ... but this should not be viewed as an attempt to limit participation. I should have made this clearer in my original post. )

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Originally Posted by CookieMonster

* leads someone to see hazards that are not real at the expense of hazards that are real.
* leads someone to make choices that put them into more dangerous situations.
* leads someone to focus entirely on the current situation rather than situations that may arise in the immediate future.
* leads someone to excessive risk-taking out of desperation.

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Can someone give examples of these, and of "excessive conservatism?" I consider myself more conservative than most of the people I go out with, but it's hard to answer and discuss the questions without having a clear understanding of the terms.

Here is a gross example:

A person was leading her group and was specifying 1 by 1 travel in very low angle very low relief rolling terrain that had near 0 chance of sliding and 0 consequence if it did. This preson was a relatively inexperienced ski patroller who had a Level I and was taking a II. After about 10 minutes of crawling pace, her group members said, "hey, let's go all together through these safe areas because we are moving very slowly." She became defensive and replied "No, we are practicing safe travel techniques!"

In this case, her inexperience caused her to apply maximum precaution as though there was high risk at all times when she needed to be able to vary the level of precaution to manage the actual risk. This caused her to focus on managing one-by-one travel instead of analyzing at the snow and terrain for actual risks that might be present later on the route. This caused the group to become frustrated and they picked a new leader.

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Look at the second creek slide where they were heavily concerned with rising temperatures despite the lack of evidence of thermal induced activity or warning signs for it... or even a thermometer. They focused on this perceived wet slide danger and rushed to get down ignoring the more real dangers of wind slab, rollovers, and terrain traps.

.... I'll try to think of some more later.

Good examples, given those I can say I don't think I'm excessively conservative. I can't think of any time poor decisions were made due to excessive conservatism, unless skiing bulletproof spring snow rather than corn due to starting super-early (and things being too cold to sit around and wait for it to warm up) to avoid wet danger counts. I define unacceptable consequences as someone getting hurt (or worse) due to a poor decision.

Maybe some will consider it "excessive," but I generally work to avoid anything over 30 degrees until spring rolls around, sometimes even on "low" danger days. This last weekend CAIC called for "low" in the zone and aspects I was skiing, but there was a foot+ of fresh storm snow that cracked and moved at every rollover. What if we hadn't started with conservative terrain?

Excessive conservatism tends to be practiced by inexperienced people due to uncertainty of either the decisionmaking process itself, or uncertainty about a specific observation and how it should be prioritized within that process.
Excessive conservatism may also be practiced immediately after a close call, not necessarily one they were directly involved in. I don't think it matters whether the close call was due to missing a critical piece of the puzzle, or ignoring that piece and letting the human factors take over.
Regardless, I've seen excessive conservatism by an individual breed a kind of culture of fear within a group, which can seriously interfere with the development and practice of good decisonmaking skills. People just say "No" because of one observation, without bothering to use that observation as part of assessing the big picture, which may still lead to saying No, but at least that conclusion was reached through a relatively objective process.

interesting topic. I am very conservative in general and even more so in the winter. I look at it like this....when I go out on a tour in the winter, I go expecting not to ski anything big. Mainly meadow skip, poke around in the snow some, study the pack some, get some exercise and enjoy being outside and hopefully ski some pow safely. Because of that, I really never look or go looking to ski bigger lines in the winter. That changes in teh spring when things firm up. LIke Bean said, I then normally go super early to avoid wet danger. Maybe that is too conservative, but I don't think it has to do with my knowledge or experience in the bc...but more my acceptable risk level based on where I'm at personally in my life. Very interesting topic, thanks for posting.

looking forward to more great responses.

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Originally Posted by ed nauseum

Regardless, I've seen excessive conservatism by an individual breed a kind of culture of fear within a group, which can seriously interfere with the development and practice of good decisonmaking skills. People just say "No" because of one observation, without bothering to use that observation as part of assessing the big picture, which may still lead to saying No, but at least that conclusion was reached through a relatively objective process.

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I think this is a good observation, and I have experienced situations where this went the same way. I don't like to argue for risk, and figure that if someone is nervous about a decision to the point that they're vocal about it, I will defer to conservative guy's judgment, if only for the reason that I don't want to be the guy who argued and turned out to be wrong (and/or worse, got everybody killed), but I have also stopped skiing/climbing with certain people who put me in that situation too many times (which is fine, everybody's risk tolerance is different).

I have also seen it go the other way, where super conservative guy doesn't want to do anything remotely risky, the group prevails and the overall group risk tolerance swings the other way, kind of a "psychological momentum"(?) of the risk-tolerants prevailing over the risk-averse comes into play as the conservative voice of the group shuts up and the rest of the group revels in making less conservative decisions. Not a good situation, and also leads to a general group funk.

However, I think most of the examples of "excessive conservatism" given here are really examples of tunnel vision, in which someone (generally with little experience) forgets to look at the big picture while trying to minimize a single risk factor, and ends up increasing their overall risk as a result. Like BFD mentioned, if you understand the big picture, and really go overboard to minimize your risk, you just end up missing a line or a summit, or (at the extreme) hopping back in the car and high-tailing it home. Anything else is just misplaced conservatism or poor prioritization

I have never felt I am being to conservative that being said I think the points you made are valid but are more geared towards those who are new to the backcountry in experience regardless of formal education.

For me, unacceptable risk is the possibility of triggering a slide of any dangerous size above terrain traps, or triggering a slide with a steep/loaded start zone. I am in the backcountry alot...If I take big risks often my life will be short.

I don't think that excessive conservatism has ever gotten me into trouble. I go into EV basically every day. There is so much avy prone shit out there its stupid. Even if the rose is red, I will go out there and ride through dense mature trees to the street. For me its more about getting the fuck away from people. I dont need to do huge lines when danger is elevated. I am fine with mini golf and some bushwacking on those days, and when someone wants to do something more open (not treed), I am against it. When the danger is moderate or below, and snow tests and riding experiences warrant, I'll do some big lines. Otherwise, no thanks.

For me acceptable risk is tougher thing to describe than unacceptable risk. Acceptable risks are sloughs or the possibility to trigger small slides in isolated areas. The type of situation where in the unlikely even that something would occur, full burial would be unlikely and well-trained friends would be close-by. Honestly, with many of the lines I I ride in elevated avi danger, and the amount of natural features, I think I am indefinitely more likely to hit a tree than get buried in an avi.

Agree that the group decision always defers to the least risk tolerant in the group. It can't, or shouldn't, be any other way.
I'm definitely not suggesting that exposure to unacceptable risk makes any sense. I'm suggesting that rational risk assessment is a superior process to defaulting to excessive conservatism, though what is excessive to one person is dead-on for another. Being conservative isn't likely to cause you to get into trouble, but it could easily result in missing out on developing one's skills and on skiing some great places.
But excessive conservatism may, as khakis points out, end up with high-tailing it for home when perhaps the objective risk was well within acceptable limits for most of the group. That makes group member choice important, in that each member should be close to the same point on the risk tolerance scale and in decisionmaking ability, as it doesn't work if one or two members are at one or other extreme end of that scale.

I am not sure that I get what you're calling Excessive Conservatism. It seems very subjective to me and calling someone excessively conservative is most likely to happen when either they kibosh the plan to ski a slope or peak or their perceived paranoia becomes a bad vibe for the rest of the group.

One persons excessive conservatism is anther's sound judgment depending on the risk tolerance of the parties involved. Who's to say what is excessively conservative? Its your choice to whom you tour with and if Bob or Betty doesnt get the pow because they turn around at the sight of any new snow or terrain steeper than a green run, find another partner with risk tolerance on your level, don't poo-poo him or her as excessively conservative.

Some of the examples that Cookie and Summit use seem to me more like simple inexperience, where the rookie is focusing on the wrong information or just plain old making a poor decision given conditions or situation rather than being too conservative per se.

smitchell - finding danger where, objectively, there is little to no danger. That's my stab at the definition

I guess one question would be: how does one gain feedback with regard to excessive conservatism?

Specifically, it occurs to me that inexperienced backcountry travelers (holding myself out as an example) will have difficulty becoming less conservative over time due to confirmation bias. If I don't ski a 20 degree slope because I think it's going to slide, I can be back at the car and think to myself, "of course it didn't slide, because I didn't ski it!" The problem here is, of course, that I haven't received any feedback as to whether or not my observations/decision was correct. Worse, I may be giving myself negative feedback (like the old parable about the rock that keeps tigers away). It seems like that kind of feedback loop can easily create an "experienced" backcountry skier with a questionable amount of practical knowledge.

How do backcountry travelers overcome this sort of magical thinking?

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Originally Posted by fluxrad

How do backcountry travelers overcome this sort of magical thinking?

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this will sound rather cavalier, but intentionally setting off a well managed slide CAN be a good thing (ie tied in, etc). my opinion is that sliding snow (slough, avalanche etc) is really bad if you are not expecting it, and not prepared for it to happen. but the more you intentionally set them off through cutting off a cornice, or a belayed ski cut to test your hypothesis, the more safely you can travel.

i personally treat every ski run i make in the winter with the mindset that it COULD slide, so how do i need to manage it if it does, where can i go to avoid the trigger points, and back off when variables present themselves that are unmanageable (ie proposed depth & force, possibility of hang-fire for rescuers, rocks/trees in runout, etc), or there simply is not a safe route large enough for the group to ski, or the safe route is not readily apparent, etc. the more you plan your route to avoid triggers points, the more safely you can ski. the more you understand trigger points, the more likely you are to turn around (or at least i am).

i have seen people back off steeper lines that are less loaded in favor of shallower pitched lines that are more loaded or have buried hard slab in the name of "safety" when in my opinion they are making a much more dangerous choice.

the more you understand about how avalanches work and happen, the more safely you can travel in the backcountry. they should not be seen as the "phantom menace", but rather a necessary evil to the sport, and work to avoid them.

to reference directly the berthoud 2nd creek slide, watching the POV, my first thought was as soon as the turn onto the loaded snow was made "DON'T GO THERE". then it slid.

I have skied with hyper conservative skiers... lvl 1, ski patrol, taking lvl 2 and skiing with a spouse... I think they were trying to one up each other on "being safe".

It created a lot of tension in the group and a push back (granted the snow pack was and had been bomber) to push for more objectives that were exposed, steeper and further away from the cabin. The weird part was it was a couple we skied with a bunch and never really had this issue before.


Marshal has a philosophy similar to my own... treat slopes like they will slide, look at the slope for triggers and safe zones, then think and plan how to manage the slide/slough if and when it happens.

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Originally Posted by Summit

This caused her to focus on managing one-by-one travel instead of analyzing at the snow and terrain for actual risks that might be present later on the route. This caused the group to become frustrated and they picked a new leader.

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This could also cause the trip to take longer than it should have, resulting in increased fatigue later, or travelling at night... both of which could possibly result in increased danger later on.

really interesting thread...due to limited experience I know I've engaged in the types of conservatism described in these threads, by sticking to low-angled, low-consequence terrain on days when conditions probably could have allowed for more

to date my understanding of the factors involved and decision making processes have been based on self intstruction (tremper's book, this board, etc.) and the limited tours I have made with those more experienced in the bc. I can honestly say I haven't been completely confident in my grasp of a significant enough amount of the factors that should be included in the decision making process, which has led to said conservatism

taking avy 1 this weekend up in RMNP, and I'm sure my view of the process as a whole will change a bit, even if only to give me a better understanding of how many factors I haven't learned to evaluate yet...

One example I've seen / talked about is how much gear to bring on a bc tour.

If you're so conservative that you need a bivy, full blown first aid kit, extra food/water, sleeping bag, stove, puffy, etc every time you go out, you can end up severely limiting your ability to move quickly if you have to and/or being much more tired than you would be otherwise leading to other types of risks. Obviously this one can go both ways (risk of not being prepared), but like all risk assessment there are trade-offs and no silver bullets.

Another one I see is that it's easy to be so concerned about avalanches that folks tend to be dis-proportionately concerned about slides compared to other backcountry risks. The obvious one is tree skiing, where most folks will go when the danger is high, but presents all kinds of other (often not insignificant) risks like hitting a tree, falling in a creek, tree wells, separating from partners, etc.

It is interesting to me that folks who go out all winter in the high elevation backcountry to remote areas and only ski slopes of less than 28 degrees (or whatever their number is) consider themselves to be very conservative. There are so many other risks (driving to the trail head, injury, getting lost, etc.) that they seem to have a skewed perception of the actual risks. (This is not a comment about skiing low-angle slopes, I actually follow that practice much of the time, it is more a statement about how many folks aren't honest about the other real risks inherent in just going out.)

dino I think that's a great point, particularly about comparative risks. Humans naturally suck comparing different kinds of risk: heart attack vs avalanche, car accident vs tree randomly falling on you.

I disagree about the equipment. If people are taking risks because they are too tired from the gear they carry, then their problem is in judging their own ability, not the extra 4 pounds in their backpack. Even if someone geeked out and had a 2 pound survival/repair/FAK, 3L of water, 3000calories, and a goretex bivy sack, that adds up to only 8 pounds. That's only half as much as a pair of Super 7s with Dukes.

We generally carry about 4 pounds of avalanche gear. We talk about over-focusing on the avalanche risk in comparison to other possibilities. Is it really so ridiculous for someone to carry an equal amount of weight that can deal with the myriad other risks? I've seen people screwed by not having a headlamp, food, water, or binding repair kits, but never seen anyone hosed because they were too prepared while backcountry skiing.

Returning to your point of overfocus on avalanche... how many of us know people who have Level II avalanche courses but don't have anything medically more than a 3 hour community first aid class they took 10 years ago, much less current CPR?

If you feel that your knowledge is lacking to make proper decisions in avalanche terrain, then how exactly is sticking to low angled low consequence terrain excessive???? I'd call it being smart and knowing that you don't know enough, not excessive.

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Originally Posted by miahw2828

really interesting thread...due to limited experience I know I've engaged in the types of conservatism described in these threads, by sticking to low-angled, low-consequence terrain on days when conditions probably could have allowed for more

to date my understanding of the factors involved and decision making processes have been based on self intstruction (tremper's book, this board, etc.) and the limited tours I have made with those more experienced in the bc. I can honestly say I haven't been completely confident in my grasp of a significant enough amount of the factors that should be included in the decision making process, which has led to said conservatism

taking avy 1 this weekend up in RMNP, and I'm sure my view of the process as a whole will change a bit, even if only to give me a better understanding of how many factors I haven't learned to evaluate yet...

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