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Backpack: Highcountry: Hazards
Do you know what to do if you are standing on an exposed talus field where the nearest shelter is several miles away - and several hundred feet down - just as a lightning bolt announces its intention to make its acquaintance with every atom in your body? Bolster your odds against lightning and avalanches by taking these few precautions. When lightning strikes.- As unhelpful as it sounds, like so many other issues of safety, the best strategy regarding lightning is to avoid it. Rarely do storms race in without any warning at all, and even when storms are sudden, they may also be predictable.
- The most common pattern in mountains world-wide is that storms roll in during the afternoon, by which time you should plan to be off of the ridges and safely below the timber.
- But what about those times when your route keeps you high all day - or the weather does get capricious, and a storm roars through in the morning? In this case, what not to do is as important as what to do, because above treeline, something that looks like shelter may actually act as a lightning rod.
- Places to AVOID:
- Highpoints or ridges: if you are stuck above treeline, try to at least get off
 of the highpoint or ridge. - Caves: while shallow caves might look like good shelter, they are actually lightning attractors.
- Puddles of water: an electricity conductor.
- Rock outcrops: they attract ground currants.
- Gullies: a good lightning path.
- Exposed fields, hilltops, bodies of water, wire fences.
- To further reduce exposure, crouch or kneel but do not lie flat or put your hands on the ground (you want to minimize the contact between your body and the ground). Keeping your hands off the ground makes it more likely that even if you were to be hit by a ground current, the lightning would pass from one foot to the other - not through your body's central core to your hands and thence the ground.
- You can further protect yourself by standing on a coil of rope or mattress pad, which provides insulation between you and the ground, and by getting rid of metal: your external frame pack, your steel ice ax, or your aluminum ski poles.
Avoid avalanches.Know where you are at risk and go around risky areas. Avalanches tent to be found in the same places year after year. The chute will be steep and bare, usually with no trees . Avoid it! - Best time: If you must cross an avalanche chute it''s safest to do so just after there has been an avalanche, before more snow has had a chance either to fall or to begin to melt. If you must cross an avalanche-prone slope, do it in the early morning, when it''s still cold. This is not fool proof. On some mountains particularly prone to avalanches, you can lie awake at night listening to them fall. Avoidance is, as always, the best strategy.
- Worst time: Consider recent weather conditions. A series of cold nights followed by warm days is most dangerous. Late afternoon is most dangerous.
- Equipment: There is special equipment available for hikers and skiers, including a device to measure the slope of a hill, ski poles that screw together to become avalanche probes, and a transmitter to mark your position in case you''re caught in an avalanche. But if you need this kind of equipment, you need to have spent some time in the field with an instructor.
- Tips:
- Before going across an avalanche slope, unfasten your pack belt so you can extricate yourself from your pack if necessary.
- If you are using a transmitter, turn it on.
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© Copyright 1999-2005 GetOutdoors, All rights reserved.
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Excerpted from Advanced Backpacking: A Trailside Guide. Copyright © 1998 by Karen Berger. With permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
