Copied from Bruce Tremper - http://www.couloirmag.com/articles/avy/tremper_series/tentips.asp
1) Remember that avalanche classes, books and videos are only the very first step. The mountains have to teach you the rest. The average avalanche victim is very skilled in their sport but their avalanche skills almost always lag seriously behind. Most people not only overestimate their avalanche skills but they vastly overestimate them. How much time have you spent developing your skiing skills? How much on avalanche skills? See what I mean?
2) Call the local avalanche bulletin. Talk to a local ski patrol.
3) Look for all the Indian Signs.
• The best sign of avalanches are other avalanches
• Collapsing and cracking of the snowpack
• Recent heavy loading of new or especially wind-loaded snow
• Rain on new snow or rapid warming of cold dry snow.
4) Continually do active tests. Push a ski pole into the snow, cut out small blocks with your mitten and pull on them, jump on test slopes, trundle cornices.
5) If you know how, dig a snowpit in several representative spots. Do compression tests and Rutschblock tests. (Shovel shear tests don’t work very well.) And NEVER base your entire stability evaluation on just one snowpit test.
6) Practice safe travel techniques, one at a time, get out of the way at the bottom, have an escape route planned, spoon in your tracks, do ski cuts, etc.
7) See a therapist. Character flaws might provide your friends with good gossip but in the mountains they will kill you. Almost all accidents involve the human factor. Ego, pride, stubbornness, euphoria, goal blindness, haste, anger, the list goes on and on (See Couloir IX-2) Staying alive in the mountains means making decisions based on facts and not on emotions.
8) Just in case the above tips don’t work, carry rescue equipment, beacon, shovel, collapsible probe. (Screw together ski pole probes don’t work very well and they are the first things you’ll loose in an avalanche.)
9) You need to swim hard in avalanche debris to stay on the surface. You can’t swim with things attached to your feet and hands. Never wear safety straps or pole straps. Always wear releasable bindings. Rig up snowboard bindings with a ripcord so you can get out of them in a hurry.
10) Remember, you can never push the safety arrow to 100%, but by doing all of the above, you can get close. Take comfort in the fact that the old saying “All the avalanche experts are dead,” is absolutely not true, never has been true. In fact, 99 percent of the ones I know have spent half their lives in dangerous avalanche terrain and they’re still very much alive.
