How to survive an avalanche

On the 9 February 2020, a huge avalanche struck the Indian state of Uttarakhand and killed several dozen people and caused over 200 to go missing. Its believed to have been started by a glacier high up in the mountains warming enough to cause a large portion of ice to break off, and create a chain effect of falling debris. This avalanche caused the highest loss of life in a single incident in years, and normally deaths caused by them are single group incidents, but is there really anything you can do to survive such a disaster?

Unfortunately this is one of those natural disasters that you are completely at the mercy of, and if you can’t avoid it then you have to wait until it spits you out or comes to a stop. The best way to survive an avalanche is to avoid being caught in one in the first place, and knowing what to look for is the key to this. Here are a few tips on how to increase your chances of survival should you ever be caught in one:

1) Try to avoid it

Probably the most obvious point is one you’ll do anyway out of instinct. If you see a huge wave of snow and ice come crashing towards you, then try and move as far out its path as possible. You won’t be able to outrun it so try to move out the main flow of it, or take cover behind something sturdy like a rock or tree.

2) Try to stay on top

If you get completely buried by an avalanche, you have a 50% chance of getting out alive, so staying on top of the flow will greatly increase your chances of survival. To do this try and swim along with the flow, pushing yourself to the surface any way you can to try and avoid being buried. This is much easier said than done though and debris within the avalanche will make this much harder.

3) If you get buried, the top priority is air

The snow won’t be hard packed and will contain a lot of air, allowing you to push it away from your face and create a small pocket where you can get some air. At the point you come to a stop, you’ll be panicking and breathing very quickly, so it’s important to try and stay conscious so you don’t freeze to death and having enough air is the first step to achieving this.

(Hopefully you’ll never be in the position where this is your view after going on a skiing trip)

4) If you have the ability to dig, make sure you’re going the right way

The problem won’t be moving the snow itself, but rather the enormous amount of it you need to move to get out. After being flipped all over the place during the fall, it can be very disorientating and when you come to a stop, it’s hard to tell which way up you’re facing. The easiest way to determine direction is to spit and let gravity show you which way is down. This may sound odd but when your elevated in the middle of 30 feet deep snow after being rolled around a lot, it can be genuinely difficult to tell which way is up.

5) Don’t panic

This is a key rule for any survival situation, but it’s even more important when surrounded by snow. If you panic you’ll use more oxygen and breathe faster, which will cause you to sweat and create moisture within your space. The faster you can get out the better, but it still might take a while to dig your way out or wait until rescue finds you, and having moisture on your body and around your face when your deep beneath the snow is extremely dangerous and will shorten your survival time.

6) Try to find a way to signal for help

It might take a while for the rescue team to find you, especially if it was quite a big avalanche, so speeding this up by having a way to signal them will save your life. If you can see the surface but can’t quite reach it, then use anything you can to wave above the ground that you might have on you, like a ski pole or piece of clothing or anything that isn’t white. Any heavy debris like trees or rocks caught in the slide with fall below the surface, leaving the top as a sheet of untouched white. Anything that isn’t that colour will stick out and lead rescue teams straight to your position.

7) Don’t take your time

In many survival situations it’s important to plan and do things properly, but when you’re covered in snow which got inside your clothes during the fall, your time is very limited, and it becomes a race against trying not to pass out and freeze to death. Unless someone saw the point you went under and knows where you are, its highly likely you’ll pass out before anyone has the chance to find you, so don’t waste any time taking breaks or going slow, because when you’re buried under snow you won’t have the luxury of spare time.

(Every year there are millions of small avalanches that no one see’s and dont cause any damage, like this tiny powder fall that would struggle to bury a person)

A few facts about avalanches

• An avalanche can start almost instantly and can reach speeds of up to 80 mph in only a few seconds.

• You have a survival chance of 90% if found within 20 minutes, but this drops rapidly to a 1 in 3 chance of survival after 1 hour of being buried.

• 9 out of 10 avalanches are caused by someone in their party walking or skiing on the wrong type of snow.

• There are an average of 150 deaths each year to avalanches around the world.

• In the vast majority of avalanches, the snow has to be at least 12 inches deep for one to be able to start.

• If someone isn’t killed by an initial wounding in the fall, then they are guaranteed to die from either hypothermia or suffocation.

• Powder snow avalanches can reach speeds of close to 200 mph and can contain several million tons of snow. These are caused in areas where the snow hasn’t had chance to melt and doesn’t stick together, causing a very mobile and powdery snow flow.

• Wet snow avalanches usually don’t even reach 30 mph, but are much more destructive to objects and property. They are so slow because the snow is partially melted together and sticks as it falls down the slope, but they are much denser and therefore many times heavier, making them capable of pushing entire buildings over.