I returned from an avalanche course last weekend and Sarah welcomed me home by exclaiming, “You are going to be so jealous!” She and Hannah had gone ice skating that day and found a perfect learning environment.
What makes the perfect learning environment? It’s all about consequence. This risk assessment matrix is a helpful way to look at it:
This matrix is an effort to evaluate the likelihood of an event and its consequences. The lower left corner (green) fits events that are not likely and not a big deal, like a flat tire on a bike when commuting to work. This is a comfort zone, and we don’t learn much here.
The sweet spot for learning is the upper left corner:
Events in the upper left are highly likely, but not a big deal. Most of my work as an outside educator is identifying or creating these sites: where can we fall out of our boats, intentionally trigger weak layers in the snow, or learn about the different ways that ice cracks, with as much margin of safety as possible?
The learning zone is very different from the scary zone in the lower right corner, where events are not likely, but have high consequences. This corner terrifies me. Deep persistent slab avalanche problems fit this category:
Back to Sarah’s thin-ice learning experience. Here’s Hannah skating on about 3/4″ inch of ice. Notice that she is causing both radial and circumferential cracks to form. Circumferential cracks are an indicator that you could plunge through at any second.
But, in this case, breaking through isn’t a big deal! Under the thin ice is a layer of water then 6+ inches of ice—more than enough to support the weight of skaters.
The consequences are wet boots.
Sarah and Hannah got to learn a lot about thin ice without actually exposing themselves to thin ice hazards. I am jealous! They stumbled upon (or, rather, glided to) a learning sweet spot.
Interesting and informative. Thanks!
Hi Luc, hope you don’t mind me hijacking this post to ask a rather unrelated question (although the post was assuredly good, too! A lot of carryover from avy training). Also really enjoyed your recent ice talk at the campbell creek science center.
I recently moved back to the Anchorage area after leaving for college and a job and I was wondering where you found the “humble badasses” you’ve mentioned in your posts. Are there certain clubs in Anchorage you are a member of? Or mostly through the classics over the years? I’d like to eventually tackle trips akin to yours, so I am in the market for adventure partners, especially for the upcoming summer as I’d really like to get pretty far into packrafting from zero this summer. Definitely considering taking one of your courses for it, by the way. Thanks in advance.
That’s a great question. I’ll chew on it as a potential post topic someday.
I don’t have a good answer for you. I was very lucky in that my high school had backpacking as a PE course and we got to spend a lot of time together outside learning about good and less good partnerships. It was a high school friend’s older brother who introduced me to the Wilderness Classics and that amazing social network.
I want to think that modeling best partner characteristics will attract folks to us, but it probably isn’t that easy.
Trainings. I love seeing folks paddling together later in the summer who met in my swiftwater courses. A lot of folks choose to exchange contact info. Makes sense … you know that person has some of the same interests (being prepared for the stuff that goes wrong). Avy, swiftwater, glacier travel, WFR, etc. I personally have an annual training budget … I get some form of training each year.
Clubs: Various FB groups exist, but even better are probably the live meetups … Mountaineering Club of Alaska, Wild Ice Skating Club of Alaska, etc. Volunteer opportunities: Challenge Alaska. Nordic Ski Patrol (SAR), AMRG, ski events, etc. Alaska Rock Gym. I’ve made a few partners by seeing them at similar events, starting a friendship, and then discovering that we are good backcountry partners.
I recognize that this is a real challenge. Especially moving [back] to a new community, and as we get older. Good luck!
Luc, I appreciate your information very much and you easily make the point about risk and consequence. However I must be honest, it really troubles me that most of the skaters in your videos are not wearing helmets. You also suggest here that so-called sandwich ice, with a layer of ice on top of a layer of water with more solid ice under the water, is not consequential. Several skaters face-planted in sandwich ice here on the East Coast this winter and were quite hurt (ie facial lacerations, gruesome photos available). They could have been much more hurt had they not been wearing helmets (eg brain trauma). You and your peers are in a position to be important role models for this critical safety step and I hope you will do so. Thanks for considering. Jo
Hi Jo- thanks for your comment and I appreciate your perspective! I agree that helmets are really important for ice activities. Risk management is a series of dials and sliders … these skaters are more vulnerable without helmets so they are moving very slowly to reduce the likelihood of falling. Treating this environment as a learning opportunity, and given their skating proficiency, made it an acceptable for them to skate without helmets. I think the key is to be intentional about our safety decisions.
Sandwich ice as we call it here in New England, referenced in the above video and post above, has become a real scourge in the past few seasons and caused some serious injuries. We now receive more rain than in the past and the lack of deep freezes after has made this a fairly normal occurrence on our lakes. While it does allow you to see crack patterns indicative of ice failure without the risk of going through, it also creates a huge trip hazard. I am one of several unfortunate victims of this, having suffered a massive faceplant that resulted in deep lacerations and facial scars. I was not going very fast but there was a deeper pocket of slush mixed in that was indiscernible from the other ice, several inches deeper in fact in an isolated pocket, that stopped me in my tracks. My head hit so hard on the ice that my helmet shattered the ice. Without the helmet, I would have had a skull fracture or worse. On the same day a friend had the same injury on another venue. He hit so hard his helmet broke through the ice. In both cases our helmets did not break and our skulls are intact. Both very experienced and accomplished skaters. In addition, I know of a few shoulder and rib injuries related to this as well. Hopefully this ice does not become the norm, but I would advise everyone to approach it with caution and please wear protective gear such as helmets and padding to protect yourself all the time
I fully agree. And maybe could have been more clear that *this* was identified as a learning environment and treated as such (moving very slow). I’m not claiming that all sandwich ice is safe. What stood out to me was that Sarah and Hannah both emphasized how much they learned from this site. I love that.