Hand Drawn (and Hiked) by McCall

Happy almost Thanksgiving! I hope everyone’s easing into the long weekend with empty inboxes and full fridges. I’m back east for 10 days and at the time you’re reading this, there’s a 90% chance I’m snuggled up to one (or both) of my parent’s dogs.

PS: I’ve been thinking about shaking up the structure of this for a while, so I’m trying a few new things today. Like it? Hate it? Indifferent? I’d love love love any and all feedback.

Avalanche Chronicles

This week, I’m bumping up this section since 1. it’s ski season and 2. this is always the section where I have the most to say. Why sandbag it and keep it at the bottom?

The focus of this section is the three components of avalanche risk: hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. What do these three components actually mean? So glad you asked!

Avalanche Hazard: is the potential for an avalanche to cause damage to something of value. It’s important to note that avalanche “hazard” and “danger” are interchangeable terms and often used in lieu of one another. Avalanche hazard level is a function of snowpack stability, the frequency distribution of snowpack stability, and avalanche size for a given unit (area and time).

One call out: hazard occurs independent of human interactions. There can be avalanche hazard without skiers present, whereas risk and vulnerability are greatly influenced by where a skier/snowboarder is and their subsequent actions — it’s only through exposure to avalanche terrain that we take on risk, as pictured below:

In the above example, the hazard exists with a persistent slab lying at an angle well above 30° which can be triggered by something like an animal or just rising temperatures.

Hazard also goes back to the avalanche danger scale that we covered a few weeks ago — it can be briefly summarized as the environmental danger of an avalanche, but I wanted to give y’all the long-winded version.

Avalanche Exposure is the amount of time and position in which you’re interacting with avalanche terrain. In a few more words, exposure is how you interact with the terrain in terms of your specific position and the length of time you’re exposed to the hazard. Even during periods of high avalanche hazard, a simple reduction in exposure to avalanche terrain will reduce risk.

You can bring your exposure down to zero by being careful not to go into or underneath any avalanche terrain. Take, for example, the two routes below:

In the photo above, the yellow route is less danger because the trees act as anchors on the snow slab. Rocks, trees, or bushes can add stability to a slope by disrupting the continuity of weak layers. The example I loved from Bruce Temper’s Staying Alive In Avalanche Terrain was imagining a piece of paper thumbtacked to a wall. If you had one thumbtack pushed through the paper at the top and pulled on the paper from the bottom, it’ll easily rip apart from the thumbtacked portion and break. If you were to add, say, 5 more thumbtacks to the piece of paper it’ll be substantially harder to rip off the wall; the more thumbtacks you add, the harder it is to rip.

In this example, the trees are the thumbtacks.

Last up, Avalanche Vulnerability is how susceptible you are to the impacts of an avalanche (and is strongly linked to consequence). Proper gear, training, and knowledge will make you far less vulnerable to avalanche hazards. An experienced backcountry skier who has the knowledge and equipment to respond immediately when caught in an avalanche is less vulnerable than a beginner who may be slow to recognize the situation and be swept away.

That’s all for today! If you’ve got an appetite for more knowledge before the next edition, I recently discovered the Avalanche.org encyclopedia and it’s a goldmine of information.

Artiste Break

This section will more than likely be short and sweet moving forward. Over time, I’ve realized I’m a lot better at drawing than talking about my drawing — whether that’s the thought process behind starting, the creative process along the way, or just why I’m making what I’m making.

If this comes to a point where questions start coming in about any of the above, I’ll gladly answer them here. For now, let this section be your mini brain-break to just show what I’m up to.

Mini Musings

Here’s a fun fact - my favorite holiday? New Years Day. The idea that there’s an entire day devoted to looking at the year prior and reflecting, while thinking about the person you want to be looking ahead — I love it.

With Thanksgiving just a few days away, it’s the perfect time to start reflecting on 2023. How different is your life today than it was a year ago? How different do you want your life to be a year from now?

An easy exercise to start is going through your camera roll to reflect on some of your favorite moments from the year. Take some time this next week and scroll through the last year; take note of the emotions that come up. Are there any super happy moments you forgot about? What about super happy moments you don’t have any photos of?

Spoiler alert: that’s how I’ll be spending my flight back to Denver Monday night.

What I’m Noodling On

🍄 Denver held it’s first ever Psychedelic Cup last week where awards like “best in show” and “most envious” were awarded to different fungi growers. Funky!

🗞️ One of my favorite creators for all things content strategy, First Rodeo Creative, launched her inaugural newsletter. Highly, highly recommend for anyone in the creative strategy space — Jesse is one of the best in the biz

📡 One of the most useful backcountry tools*, the Garmin InReach, is on sale! It’s typically a $400+ purchase, and I snagged one for my boyfriend as a Christmas gift (nobody tell him) for $299.

*If you’re wondering why this is such an important purchase, especially for being in the backcountry, I’ll leave you with a little anecdote rather than listing off features that you can find in the hyperlink above. Last year, 20ish friends of mine went on a hut trip to Margy’s Hut right outside of Aspen. It’s a 12 mile hike with 2.7K ft of elevation gain to get from the trailhead to the hut, so needless to say, it’s a trek to get there — but well worth it as you’re in some of the best backcountry skiing terrain in CO. (Fun fact: I was supposed to join on the trip and woke up at 5:30AM to hit the road and meet them at the trailhead, but I woke up to an email that I was laid off from my gig at Morning Brew - womp, womp - so I kept my rattled self home.)

After trekking for 7+ hours to get to the hut, the only guy on the trip who had a satellite phone got a text from his backcountry partner, who was back at home, with the avalanche report for the following day. Unexpectedly, a massive storm was rolling in that none of them knew about since they were all out of range for cell service. The avalanche hazard for the following day was extremely high as a result, and they made the (very tough) decision to turn back around and ski out. And they would’ve never known otherwise! Safety gear is always, always, always a good investment. End rant.

Catch you in December!

- McCall 🌻

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