Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles Bryant and there's no ol over there. It's like Jerry with a beard, and this is stuff you should know. Yeah, that's a good way to describe no Al because it's not at all accurate except for the beard. But it's funny. It is funny. That's the point that's going. It's going. Fine, you got a good intro for this one. Noah, Really, I was going to mention the terrible avalanche on Everest. Oh. Yeah, it took the lives of I believe fifteen Sherpa. Yeah that was sad. Yeah, it was especially sad because we know how Scherpall work. We've done an episode on it before, and you know, to Live and Die on the Mountain, it's kind of like it's well, it's become the sharp away a little bit, but it's still a major tragedy. Because sure, but if you go back and listen to that show or I think we even called it, what like warm friend, Yeah, like they're really great and just good souls, and it was it was super sad to hear about that. Is that what prompted this idea? I believe so, Yes, yes, okay, yes it was. I thought it might have been. I know you know a lot about snow crystal shape because of your Don't Be Dumb episode recently, I thought that might have been it. Yeah, about whether or not there is such things to snowflakes that are exactly alike. What's the answer? I think that's a good way to start out. No, not really, Okay, there each one is perfect and special. If you had if you're comparing snowflakes that are formed from a very small amount of water, then you're probably going to find some that are identical. But as I say in that episode of Don't Be Dumb, if you count those, you're a jerk. So like a real snowflake, like a snowflake like that children love and that you haven't broidered on your sweater. No, there's no two that are alike. That's pretty cool, even though something like seventies septillion snowflakes fall to Earth in a year. Wow, that's a lot of snowflakes. Yeah, but when you put them all together, they don't necessarily stick. Yeah, and every once in a while, something can happen, not yodeling that can trigger an avalanche. Yeah, and I was when we were reading through this. I've found that there were a lot of differences obviously between avalanches and uh slides that we've covered. Yeah, we did landslides. Yeah, and I even found a few little similarities and wildfires which I did not expect. Lay it on me. Well, we'll get to it later, like potential ways to Well, we'll get to it. We'll lay it on me at a future time. Ok So, um avalanches, Yeah, Basically an avalanches is uh, well, it's it's a failure of a large or small amount of snow to stay in place any longer friction once again, Yes, just like with landslides, Um, the the mass overcomes the force of friction that's holding it in place and it just kind of moves downhill all at once. The thing is that doesn't seem like a big deal, but in North America of an avalanche can reach something like two hundred and thirty thousand cubic meters in size. It's about twenty football fields filled ten feet deep with snow. How fast I've seen up to and beyond a hundred miles an hour once they really get going. That's a big deal. Yeah, So twenty football fields filled ten feet deep with snow moving in over a hundred miles an hour down a mountain. If you're on the way, yeah, to save the day. Pretty much, you're in trouble basically. So avalanches are a pretty big deal. Even though it's just snow, and snow is beautiful and wonderful and cold, it's like all of it moving at once is a problem. That's right. And um, there's a lot of different ways that an avalanche can form, but really there's three. There's three factors involved. You've got snow, yeah, you have a slope or an incline, and then you have some sort of trigger. Yeah, and like I said, it's not yodeling. Loud sounds just don't really have what it takes to trigger an avalanche. That's that's in the movies that you'll see that, Yeah, German movies. That's right. Uh, well, I guess let's back up a little bit to what we're originally talking about, which was the shape of the snow itself, because that has an impact on what's you know, when the snow hits the ground, it's gonna form, it's called a snow pack, and how stable the snow pack is is depends on the snow that is that makes up the snowpack, and like how it bonds together depends on the actual shape of those little crystals. H if you have a six pointed crystal, um, it's gonna be steadier or more stable than like needle shaped crystals right packed together better. Yeah. Then, so there's different factors that contribute to what kind of snow falls, what kind of snow accumulates, and then snow undergoes um a metamorphosis once it becomes part of the snowpack, depending on conditions that's right. For example, the temperature gra gradient has a big effect on how snow within a snowpack, which is just these blankets and blankets of snow that build up over the course of a season. Um, if there's say a higher temperature gradient, so at the surface it's very very cold, but below towards the ground, it's actually warmer because of the heat, the radiant heat coming out of the earth. The larger the temperature gradient, the larger the difference in the amount of water vapor. So warmer air or warmer snow holds more water vapor. And water vapor likes homeostasis just like everything else, so it moves from one end to another, and that actually helps trigger metamorphosis of snowflake shapes within the snow pack by um taking what's already rounded, and that's what you want. That's a stable snowpack. Yeah, which I thought would be more unstable, but it packs together easier, right, Rounded snowflakes packed together easier. And when water vapor moves from one place to another, uh, it takes rounded snowflakes and actually makes them faceted, which are more angled, yes, like flat surfaces basically, and those don't lock together as well. So that's one form of instability. Is when you have a temperature gradient. Yes, and if you have a lot of those faceted flakes, it's going to be called a depth whore h O a R. And a horror is uh is the light like you can even kind of see them on like sunny days, this sort of shiny crystally surface um layer on top that's like not really bonded exactly. It's frost is another word for it, like horror. Like avalanche, we should name this avalanches the disaster with the most jargon because there's a lot of jargon involved in avalanches. There is. We've already skipped over some of it. Like rhyme, Well, yeah, rhyme is when um, yeah, it's basically have you ever seen like a a ship going through the Arctic and it has like globules of ice, or like a tree collecting ice. That's rhyme where it's just basically a bunch of water turns into ice really quick and accumulates quickly. That's rhyme. Horrors frost rhyme is like globules of ice. What about a grapple? Uh, that is when you have deposits of rhyme that build up and form pellets of snow. Yeah, but they're not stable even though they're pellets, like yeah, which kind of flies in the face because I thought round was more stable. I think they're larger though, Yeah, I think they're like spherical, whereas round is like flat and rounded edges. So pellets are like yeah those things. You know, you get a handful of those yellow pellets, roll them around in your palms like so, and you're gonna see like it, there's no friction there. It overcomes friction. That's true. Uh, if you have you can also get rounding if if it's a low temperature gradient and you get a lot of um subfreezing going on, and it's gonna cause the rounding, which is actually good. That's gonna make it more stable. Like we were talking about UM. So you've got temperature gradient, you've got rounding from UM a low temperature gradiment. You have different types of snow that accumulate. If fascinating is can that be a verb? I just made it one. Yeah, fascinating, Yeah, fascinating is Basically it's another type of metamorphosis where snowflake undergoes a change in the snowpack after it's already fallen. It's just laying there like you think when snowfalls it's it's felt, but now it's going through some changes. Basically, a puberty of snow is what happens in the snowpack. And when fascinating happens, it's the opposite of rounding. Those edges become um more pronounced, more angular and um. A snowflake can turn into what's called depth or h O A R again uh, and it's pretty cool. Did you see the picture of depth hor It's the coolest looking snowflake you can find that it's pretty cool, Like it looks carved out like, UM, it looks three D printed, basically, doesn't it do? UM a piece of machinery or something. But from the looks of it, it looks like it would just totally lock in with any other snowflake. But for some reason that's not the case. So when you get depth Horor's is a very faceted snow packed snowflake. UM, it's not going to lead to a stable snowpack. None of these are basically everything except rounding UM leads to an unstable snow pack. That's right, And that's one of the triggers or one of the factors involved in an avalanche. That's right. What you have is if you have a failure level layer, and that's the weak layer inside the snowpack. It's called the failure layer because it fails you and causes the av inch. It fills everybody, but it can be caused by a lot of things. Uh, the things we're just mentioning and uh, depending on some other factors. Is how it's gonna deal with that failure level. UM, it can slough off the snow, and I think most people have seen that is when you see like the inverted V shape loose powdery snow coming down a mountain that is slough and that is not super dangerous. It usually doesn't do a lot of damage. Um, So that's not like the worst case scenario now, and slough is the result of Typically the failure layer is high up in the snow pack, so it's just some surface snow that's going to move as part of the avalanche. Yeah. If it's deeper, then you're gonna get the the bad boy of the avalanche scene, which is the slab avalanche. And that's when the failure layer is deep down and it's gonna bring obviously a lot more compact big chunks sliding down over that that bed layer, or it could be a huge chunk, a single chunk. Um reminiscent of when uh, you have a lot of snow on your windshield and the sun comes out and heats it and the glass becomes warmer, so the bottom of it loses friction and stability and slides down all at once. That's right. That's basically a mini slab avalanche happening on your car. Yeah. And if if it's wet um your slab, it's gonna be slower, which sounds good. Um, but it's gonna hit with more force. It has more water to it has more mass and volume, more weight babe. Yeah. Um, So let's talk about that slope. If they generally happen between five and sixty and most common between and forty five degrees, uh, is when you're gonna get an avalanche. If it's more than that steeper than that, then it's just gonna be sloughing constantly and probably not be a danger. And if it's less than that, then it's not enough of the slope to cause any problems. Yeah, it's not really going to move very much, if at all. It's just called party time on the mountain. There's also other factors, um that contribute to whether an area's avalanche prone or not. To like, Um, if it's on the um sunny side of the mountain where it gets a lot of morning sun, uh, it will actually warm up and and basically settle. The ice pack settles and becomes more stable than on the shadier side of the mountain. Same with leeward and windward. Both of these I thought was the opposite of how it should be. I had that same problem too, because they say specifically, the Freese thaw cycle can can create like a layer of ice in the snowpack that will be a failure layer eventually. So if it's in the sun every day, I mean it's slightly melting a little bit, right, then you know, why wouldn't that also be the case. I didn't get to the bottom of that one. I have no idea, but that's what I kept coming across, and source after source the same thing with Like you said, leeward, it means it's it's on the opposite side of the wind, and I would think that being on the windy side would be more dangerous. Well, no, because that causes slough the wind like blood. Okay, I guess that makes sense. That one makes sense. It's the sunny side that's just confusing. Yeah, I still say a strongest of wind could cause a slab. I'm gonna I'm gonna fly in the faces of the experts. And then um they also rate and not right like this is a five star avalanche, the best I've seen all season. They have um a rating scale from R one D one to R five D five And yes, nerds, there is an R two D two avalanche. I guess you mean me, because that was gonna be my first question. I sent you the chart, okay, but I'm still gonna ask. So the R is the size of the avalanche relative to the path that takes into account it's width, its length, its depth, the size of the avl lanch our. One is laughable. Our five is the whole side of the mountain just came down. What's an R two D two. It's a little above laughable. It's more like a woe. It's kind of like you would imagine R two D two is an avalanche, you know, all right? Uh? And then our five D five the D stands for destructive force, and that like in an R five D five, the D of that avalanche can like gouge the earth. It's it's moving with such power and intensity, and they can go up to I think one point nine miles um, traveling almost two miles at a at a solid with a solid chunk. Pretty scary stuff. Yeah, it's scary stuff. And before we get to even more stuff, let's take an message break. All right, Okay, so I believe we're talking scary things, and what can be scarier than avalanche triggered by a yodeler we've already said that's not the case. Yeah, it's three times. Um. Usually, well, sometimes it can be Usually it's people, but sometimes it can be a natural thing, like if a tree falls, or if the weather really changes quickly. Um, what else, Um, the big chunk of ice falling off a tree could trigger it. Yeah, a cornice Um, basically, a an ice pack can build up over a cliffs edge and just kind of hang there, and then eventually that the it'll collapse under its own weight and it can fall onto a ridge line below. That can definitely trigger trigger an avalanche. But in most cases it's people. Yeah. And apparently in most fatal avalanches, the person who dies in the avalanche triggered it in most cases. Oh yeah, karmic nature. I guess it seems a little a little harsh, Yeah, a little imbalanced. Yeah, I agree. Uh. All right, So let's say you have an avalanche happening. There are gonna be three parts to this avalanche. You've got your starting zone, which is above the tree line, and that's where the slab actually, that's the top part where it breaks free. It's also known as a crown. A crown that makes sense. Then you have your track and that's basically just the path that it takes. Uh. You're gonna if you go to like these mountains in the summertime, you might see that track uh as a big open area of green grass between trees. Yeah, because the avalanches wipe the trees off of that slope. So like if you're if you're unclear on whether avalanches are powerful, Yes, they take out trees on their way down and houses and ski condos and yeah, skiers, which is another reason why they're so dangerous for someone caught in the avalanche because it's not only the snow that may or may not bury you, you're also getting pummeled across against stuff on your way down because of the force of the avalanche bouring you along, like being whacked into a tree or something. Yeah. Uh. And then you've got your run out is the third segment, and that is where it comes to a sliding slow stop and that is bad news because it's it's they liken it to concrete in this article and it just sets up super hard and if you're underneath it, h you've got you know, fifteen minutes or so to get yourself out of there, or it's bye bye to life. Like the clock is ticking. Yeah, apparently most people say that you can survive buried in an avalanche for about eighteen minutes. That's tops. And the best way to survive an avalanche is to never start one. And there's techniques that um well, basically government local governments that um where mountains and ski slips are situated, and then ski resorts will higher ski patrols basically go out and test. And there's actually people who are called avalanche avalanche forecasters and they I guess, study the snowfall, the the atmospheric conditions, like if there's been a freeze thaw cycle, and they can predict roughly like when or where an avalanche may happen, and they say, point the howitzerer that way, and they'll make sure people are off of the slope, and they shoot artillery at slopes that try to trigger avalanches. That's one way to do it. And that's why that's where it reminded me of wildfires, um doing controlled burns and stuff like that, like, oh yeah, they'll actually set off an avalanche to keep an avalanche from happening. But that's really don't wait. Well, there's also ski checking, which seems kind of but that's almost like, um yeah, uh, I guess it is a little bit. It's it's a mind bogglingly dangerous sounding. Yeah, it's a job where you on purpose get on your skis and ski along the fracture line, um, to see what happens, to try to trigger trying to trigger it, and then they're gonna quickly try and outrun it. Yes, and they're hopefully skiing at the fracture line at the top of it, like around the crown, rather than inside the avalanche zone. You don't want to be there, so it would it would fall out below them rather than carry them down. And if you're ski checking, you're you're never ski checking alone. You're always part of a team and everybody's watching you, and you have a beacon on and all the other stuff that you're supposed to have. But it's still one of the more dangerous things I think you can do in snow. Yeah. I hope we have a listener that does this because I'd love to know more about it. Ski checking, Yeah, yeah, I'd like to hear that too. Some of the other things they can do to prevent uh or interrupt an avalanche that happens is to put the like physical objects in place to prevent it, like nets and anchors and fences and stuff like that, and that if an avalanche starts, at least they can divert it or stop it quicker, or maybe prevent it from happening to begin with. Sometimes they'll hire local teens to just stand there and link arms, stand in the Yeah, the red rover approach. It depends on where you live. Estonia is huge on that level prevention. Uh, they can happen anytime. They're most common in the winter obviously, but they can happen in any month. And um, usually in the first like twenty four hours after a big snowfall, it's going to be a little more likely. I guess things haven't settled in quite yet. Yes, And um, heavily logged areas, areas that have been denuded of trees because trees all taken together can kind of serve as anchors for a snowpack. So they're trying to reforest areas is a big, a big thing now And I wonder I didn't find this out, But I wonder also if trees represent a kind of a crack in a large snow pack too, In that like if there was a piece that was coming off, it would take less with it because it would eventually reach a tree. In that tree would represent a break in that connectiveness in the larger snowpack. I'm going to say yes, I would say yes to that just makes sense. Yeah, But the problem is people like to do things like what are called back country sports in places where there aren't trees. Yeah. I mean, the majority of avalanche victims are youngish dudes who, let's be honest, they're out there with their snowboard. They're getting dropped in by a helicopter where there's plenty of Dowdets. Who's who snowboard too? Yeah, that's true. But they did say males is the most one, so I think that's a fact. Oh yeah, okay, yeah, Um they're bros, you know, they're ski bros. Um Man, I can't believe. I guess I do believe that. But the person who causes the avalanche is the person who most likely dies. It's just yeah. And the reason why is because when you're when you accidentally trigger trigger this avalanche, it doesn't you're not you're on a on a line, a fault line basically that you're triggering. But It doesn't necessarily mean that everything's gonna happen below you. You could be skiing right through this slab and the stuff above you is gonna come down too, So like this whole slabs is gonna come down with you in the middle of it. Which, so you're the one who triggered it. You're the one who got buried alive too. All right, Well, we don't want that to happen to anybody, So, uh, how can we? I guess we should talk about how to do your diligence as a back country bro. Yeah, well you should do so basically, Um, you before you go out, you want to check with any local UM message boards or websites that have avalanche warnings, the bro hotline, right yeah, you want to call be like is there going to be right? Um? And there's like people who are paid to monitor this kind of thing and alert the public. So step one is to know whether there's a high likelihood of an avalanche happening where you are. Um. You also want to have taken a course in surviving avalanches. If you're doing this hardcore back country stuff, then hopefully you've done that beforehand. And there's a lot to learn to like this isn't we're just kind of scratching the surface here. Like there is a lot too to know to understand avalanches, to be able to forecast them, and to test like doing field tests. Um, so you want to really know what you're doing before you go out. You always want to go with somebody else. Gotta have a brow, buddy. The thing that I think you would just have to be a total idiot to not have is a beacon, yes of functioning beacon on you at all times, beneath your clothes so it can't be swept away. Uh yeah. And you want that set to transmit if you're the uh the person the transmit tour um, so they can find you when you're buried dying in fifteen minutes. They're not expensive, they're not um, they're not hard to come by. And you if you go out doing anything in any bad country sport and you don't have one on again, Josh Clark thinks you're an idiot. And well we may as well go ahead and talk about a couple of other pieces of equipment that you should have if you're into this. Um. They have these little backpacks now that have air bags in them. Um that you basically like pull a little ripcord in a big pillowy bag erupts sort of like a car airbag outside the top of it. And what that's gonna do is take up a bunch of space so you have air to breathe um once you're buried, and you have you know, a big hole of air at least right. Plus it also has the effect of um. If you ever have a like a canister of mixed nuts and you shake it, you'll notice like the bigger nuts, the brazil nuts all moved to the top. Yeah. Uh, same thing with you and an inflatable vest, you become bigger, so you will move towards the top of the avalanche slab and some padding in case there's debris. And then the other cool thing is called the the avalon a V A l U NNG and those are usually built into your backpack two And it's super simple. All it is is a it's sort of like a little scuba mouthpiece that you breathe through. And what it does is it diverts your exhalation down through the backpack and out like your where your butt is. Because the danger there is if you're trapped under snow and we'll get there in a second. Um, you're gonna have a small like pocket of air and one of the ways you can die is from poisoning yourself with with your CEO two. That's right. So if you got the avalon and you got your air bag and your backpack, your beacon, your beacon and maybe an inclinometer to see what that slope is before you go tackle it with your snowboard and say, bro, that one's degrees. Well, what do you want to be above sixty? Yeah? Geez I know that's awfully close to Yeah, maybe then go towards the slope. You also want to do some tests too, like where you're going to be skiing, snowboarding, high marking. Yea, be proactive. You want to dig what's called a quick pit, which is basically you become an amateur. Um, what is this snow person like smell a sense of snow Avalanchiologists. No, no, snowologists. It is a snow ologist. But there's a word. Right, you want to become an amateur Santa clause. You dig a pit. Um that affords you a view of all the layers of the snowpack, so you can basically visually inspect it for a failure layer. Um. There's other tests you can do as well, um that we won't get into. But if you're going to go out there, they should be teaching you this in your UM in your back country survival class. Yeah, of course class, sure, um. But you can also familiarize yourself on the U. S. Forest Service UM website. They have a bunch of step by step instructions with pictures for testing for avalanches. Yeah. And we looked at these and it's just no, it doesn't do any good to try and describe it. We would just get you killed and go look at the diagrams. Yeah. Uh. And you also wanna, you know, prick up your ears and listen for wamping noises or hollow sounds and avoid shady or it is like, just keep your eyes peeled. If you're experienced out there, then you you're probably gonna know what to look for. Yeah. And then there's one other thing too. If you see tracks already in a snowpack, that does not mean that it's already been tested and is safe. No, that means you can go that way right, No, it means that the person who went before you is lucky technically possibly and the last one never never travel above your partner, Like, oh yeah, that's a big one. Yeah. If your partner gets above you, then they're being very selfish, yes, or to kill you or you Yeah, yeah, you should wonder. Wait that travel insurance policy I signed, Now I get it. So if you've done all this, you do you you know how to do a rash block test, and you know how to dig a quick pit faster than anybody else, and you're you never travel above your partner and you still just triggered an avalanche. You've done everything right. But it's it's real, right, you're the person, you're the victim. Let's say, yes, all right, we're gonna give advice for two people, the victim and then the person who sees it and goes, oh my gosh, the witness. That guy just got buried. Um, all right, So if you're one of the brow victims, you're three ways you can die u physical trauma. Like we said, let's say you get smashed by a tree on the way down. You can suffocate in the snow or die of hypothermia. Pick. None of those are good. Uh, if you find that the avalanche is happening. This is before you're buried alive. Uh. And let's say you're a skier or a snowmobile or or some other extreme sports person. Um they say to try and like outski it and outright it if you can, um, you know, get the little rear view herreor going and hit the gas as quick as you can, um ski off the slab. And if you can do that, then great. If you can't, then you may be buried. And the first thing you want to do is block your mouth so it doesn't fill up with snow. And you want to, you know, try and like put your arm over it or block it as much as possible if you don't have one of those air bags, because whatever little space you create in front of your mouth is your breathable air. You want to use one arm or your hand or something, and with the other arm or leg or whatever you can, you want to thrust it toward whatever you think is up trying to get some sort of visual cue of where you are two people and they see just a swimming motion that's on your way down. You're trying to basically swim your way to the top of the of the pile of the slab that's carrying you down. Well. Yeah, and then once you start to come to a stop, then you throw your hand in front of your mouth and you try to thrust the leg up or something like that. What I read though, is you're gonna be so disoriented you'll have good luck with any of this. That's like punching a shark. Yeah, but some people can do it. Yeah, it happens. Some people have the presence of mind to do it. Those people are the ones who these instructions are for. Right. Uh. They advise you to bail on your ski gear. Um, if you have one of those backpacks though, Um, with all your emergency gear, obviously you want to hang onto that. Um. Here's the hardest part. Why stay calm, Yeah, stay calm um. They advise you, if you are honest snowmobile and you get removed from it. I don't know how you would do this, but try and get out of the path of the snowmobile as well, because that will kill you. But again, this is all happening so fast. It's just I guess you rely on instinct. I guess, so you turn into a steely nerved dude. Brouh. And then again staying calm, stay calm, You're now buried under snow, and the best advice is to stay home. You don't start screaming because you're burning your oxygen. No one's gonna hear you because they're still pretty far away. Hopefully they have they watched you the whole time. We'll get into that in a second, um, And you just have to do what you can by conserving your energy, conserving your breath, and conserving your voice until you hear somebody above you. Then you can start screaming as loud as you want, but there's no sense in screaming whatsoever until you hear somebody. Um, and then you better have that beacon on. If you have that beacon on, you set to transmit. You're with one or more other people who were with you when this happened. Hopefully they're not buried to your chances are actually pretty good. There's something like a survival rate um for people who are dug out with in the first fifteen minutes. Yeah, that's pretty quick though. So I guess that brings us to if you are the other bro and you see this happen to your friend, Um, this is what you're gonna want to do because you were there first. Help like you may not have enough time. You know, you got fifteen to eighteen minutes. You may not have enough time to ski to the rescue unit to get word out. So it's sort of up to you to try and uh get your buddy out. Yeah. If you're in a larger group, then yeah, you send some people back for help, and then some other people stay to conduct the search and rescue themselves. If it's just you, Basically, every bit of advice is, if you have any idea of where they went down, where do you think they might be, go straight there. Yeah, And it's sort of like, uh, following your golf shot, Like if it starts to happen, you don't want to look around for help or anything. You want to lock your eyeballs on your buddy and follow that as long as you can until he completely disappears. And wherever he disappears or she, that is your last Uh, that's the point of reference you're gonna want to hit first. Yeah, you want to just keep your eyes on that point and go straight to it. Um you uh, basically you want to wait a second. Well, it could be another avalanche. Yeah, you want to make sure the snow is settled. Um. And then you go over to the area where you last saw the person and you take your own beacon. Because the cool thing about beacons is not only do they transmit, they receive, So any anybody with a beacon can transmit for help and receive to lend help. Right. Yeah, So when you do that, if you're just one person, you go to the last place you saw the person and you start your search using your transponder and you start doing zig zagging motions down the mountain. Yeah, basically, you do a sweep of the avalanche area. You do a sweep. You might have something called an avalanche probe on you, and that's super long ten or twelve foot pole that collapses down to a couple of feet so you can have it in your low backpack and you know, it's basically a big poker that you can poke down in the snow. If you hear your buddy go, then that's great. And then um, some ski poles also have like like the bottoms come off so that they can be turned into um avalanche pokers. And hopefully you have a shovel on you, because that is highly recommended as well. I don't think they ever pointed that out. Yeah, you can shovel a lot faster. You can move snow a lot faster with a shovel with your hands. So if you have a beacon, a probe, and a shovel, you could be Okay, that's a T shirt. Yeah, and the other side is a guy like falling off the snows. Uh. So you said zigzagging if you're by yourself. If you're with a group of folks, they recommend that you lock arms and um sort of like you know, when you're searching for a dead body in the woods, you just set up a line of people to cover as much ground as possible, and then if you find your body, dig them out and uh, treat them as quickly as possible. They may need a little CPR, they may need a little t So turn on our CPR podcast your friends. Yeah, remember staying alive. Oh yeah, and just pump the chest to the beat of staining alive and everything will be all right. That's right. Uh. And I've got nothing else do you I don't either, Um no, that's about it. Or if you want to avoid this stuff altogether, you do like me and don't ski? Yeah, no bad country sports for you. Huh No, I mean I used to ski, but I was never very good. And uh, once you hit a certain age and you're not a great skier, it's like, why why even go out there. I've got a fifty percent chance of injuring myself. I would say you'd probably have a higher percentage chance than that. You think, Yeah, man, I took a I was in Vermont skiing one time and I took a spill that It was sort of like Chevy Chase and Christmas Vacation. I slid. I had to have slid half a mile down this mountain without being able to stop myself on my butt without my skis, and a little twelve year old maybe snowboarder snowboarded down with my skis. Stuck him in next to me and said, dude, I've never seen someone slide that far in my life. And he snowboarded off, and I said, well, you're pretty young, but yeah, it was pretty entertaining to see. I'm sure, and this is when I was younger. It would be much funnier now even Oh yeah, you know, like when the old guy falls, it's always funny. That's I mean, like you said, Chevy Chase movies. I do have one more thing, Chuck. It turns out the St. Bernard as a mountain rescue dog with its whiskey your brandy cask around its neck, supposedly as a myth like they did that. They did have St. Bernard's in the Alps and all that, and um, they did use them to like carry supplies and stuff and sometimes even spirits around their neck, but whatever uses like, they were never used as like ski patrol avalanche rescue dogs. They were just in the same area that avalanche has happened in a lot and they just happen to have booze around their necks. I call that confirmed. M all right, Well, just the popular conception that is St. Bernard is going to run up to you and dig you out and then yeah, yes, it's not correct. It's a napoleonic lie. I am going to say that has happened once, okay, because I want to think it happened. It's pretty cool and St. Bernards are cool dogs, to be sure. Uh, if you want to know more about avalanches, like we said, if you're serious about back country sports, you better go take a course. You better go to the park services website on avalanches. Get that beacon, dude, Yes, or else Josh Clark thinks you're a dummy. Um. And you can also go to how stuff works dot com and type in Avalanche in the search bar there. And since I said all that, that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this defiling history. And this dude purposefully said, if you read this, please don't show Josh because I I want to hear his reaction. So here we go. Hey, guys, I was listening to the Fourth of July Extravaganza from a few years back, uh, and realized I might have ruined a piece of American history a few years ago about a thicker, older book, looking to hollow it out so I could keep money and other important items in there that I wanted, uh, that I didn't want to keep in my personal safe. He's not. A few days ago, I was listening to the part two of that Fourth of July extravaganza and on the way back to University of Wisconsin, Go Badgers, and I heard you talking about the book Epic of America. Do you remember talking about that? Vaguely? Yes. As we had guest hosts, we had Joe and Dazzo and Wyatt Senac in Joe Garden and Halle Haglind so they may have reference that book, but I don't remember that. I knew that was the name of the book I bought to hollow out, but thought, surely it wasn't the same book. I got home, took a closer look, and it turns out I was wrong. Upon further research, I found I had bought a first edition, uh one bona fide copy of Epic of America by James tres Low Adams, and I cut a hole in the middle of it. I thought it's somewhat ironic I chose to fill the Epic of America with money. Nonetheless, I'm distraught with my lack of knowledge and accidental disregard for one of the great analyzes of the American dream, that is from Grant. Hermit's here we go, Grant. That's this reaction, Grant indignation. He's ticked. You know, we got um hollowed out books from the guys who make Rick and Morty Yeah, adult swim, Yeah, hollowed out to fit perfectly a flask, the Rick and Morty flask. It was pretty neat. Thanks for that. Why don't you get one of those? Grant and I thought when I saw that book, I thought, well, that's neat. They sent us a book and it was called like interesting science stuff or something like that. I think it was called boring Science. Of boring Science's ward people away from the book. You want to want to read that all right? Then you open it up and you're like, WHOA, I've got it on my bar right now. That's awesome. Where else would it be? I guess on my shelf. You're at work, in your work bag with you at all times. H If you want to tell us about some bonehead thing you did with a piece of Americana or anything else we want to hear about it, you can tweak to us at s Y s K Podcast. You can join us on our Facebook page at Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and as always, hang out with us at our home on the web, the Ill Chill Crib Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com

Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles Bryant and there's no ol over there. It's like Jerry with a beard, and this is stuff you should know. Yeah, that's a good way to describe no Al because it's not at all accurate except for the beard. But it's funny. It is funny. That's the point that's going. It's going. Fine, you got a good intro for this one. Noah, Really, I was going to mention the terrible avalanche on Everest. Oh. Yeah, it took the lives of I believe fifteen Sherpa. Yeah that was sad. Yeah, it was especially sad because we know how Scherpall work. We've done an episode on it before, and you know, to Live and Die on the Mountain, it's kind of like it's well, it's become the sharp away a little bit, but it's still a major tragedy. Because sure, but if you go back and listen to that show or I think we even called it, what like warm friend, Yeah, like they're really great and just good souls, and it was it was super sad to hear about that. Is that what prompted this idea? I believe so, Yes, yes, okay, yes it was. I thought it might have been. I know you know a lot about snow crystal shape because of your Don't Be Dumb episode recently, I thought that might have been it. Yeah, about whether or not there is such things to snowflakes that are exactly alike. What's the answer? I think that's a good way to start out. No, not really, Okay, there each one is perfect and special. If you had if you're comparing snowflakes that are formed from a very small amount of water, then you're probably going to find some that are identical. But as I say in that episode of Don't Be Dumb, if you count those, you're a jerk. So like a real snowflake, like a snowflake like that children love and that you haven't broidered on your sweater. No, there's no two that are alike. That's pretty cool, even though something like seventies septillion snowflakes fall to Earth in a year. Wow, that's a lot of snowflakes. Yeah, but when you put them all together, they don't necessarily stick. Yeah, and every once in a while, something can happen, not yodeling that can trigger an avalanche. Yeah, and I was when we were reading through this. I've found that there were a lot of differences obviously between avalanches and uh slides that we've covered. Yeah, we did landslides. Yeah, and I even found a few little similarities and wildfires which I did not expect. Lay it on me. Well, we'll get to it later, like potential ways to Well, we'll get to it. We'll lay it on me at a future time. Ok So, um avalanches, Yeah, Basically an avalanches is uh, well, it's it's a failure of a large or small amount of snow to stay in place any longer friction once again, Yes, just like with landslides, Um, the the mass overcomes the force of friction that's holding it in place and it just kind of moves downhill all at once. The thing is that doesn't seem like a big deal, but in North America of an avalanche can reach something like two hundred and thirty thousand cubic meters in size. It's about twenty football fields filled ten feet deep with snow. How fast I've seen up to and beyond a hundred miles an hour once they really get going. That's a big deal. Yeah, So twenty football fields filled ten feet deep with snow moving in over a hundred miles an hour down a mountain. If you're on the way, yeah, to save the day. Pretty much, you're in trouble basically. So avalanches are a pretty big deal. Even though it's just snow, and snow is beautiful and wonderful and cold, it's like all of it moving at once is a problem. That's right. And um, there's a lot of different ways that an avalanche can form, but really there's three. There's three factors involved. You've got snow, yeah, you have a slope or an incline, and then you have some sort of trigger. Yeah, and like I said, it's not yodeling. Loud sounds just don't really have what it takes to trigger an avalanche. That's that's in the movies that you'll see that, Yeah, German movies. That's right. Uh, well, I guess let's back up a little bit to what we're originally talking about, which was the shape of the snow itself, because that has an impact on what's you know, when the snow hits the ground, it's gonna form, it's called a snow pack, and how stable the snow pack is is depends on the snow that is that makes up the snowpack, and like how it bonds together depends on the actual shape of those little crystals. H if you have a six pointed crystal, um, it's gonna be steadier or more stable than like needle shaped crystals right packed together better. Yeah. Then, so there's different factors that contribute to what kind of snow falls, what kind of snow accumulates, and then snow undergoes um a metamorphosis once it becomes part of the snowpack, depending on conditions that's right. For example, the temperature gra gradient has a big effect on how snow within a snowpack, which is just these blankets and blankets of snow that build up over the course of a season. Um, if there's say a higher temperature gradient, so at the surface it's very very cold, but below towards the ground, it's actually warmer because of the heat, the radiant heat coming out of the earth. The larger the temperature gradient, the larger the difference in the amount of water vapor. So warmer air or warmer snow holds more water vapor. And water vapor likes homeostasis just like everything else, so it moves from one end to another, and that actually helps trigger metamorphosis of snowflake shapes within the snow pack by um taking what's already rounded, and that's what you want. That's a stable snowpack. Yeah, which I thought would be more unstable, but it packs together easier, right, Rounded snowflakes packed together easier. And when water vapor moves from one place to another, uh, it takes rounded snowflakes and actually makes them faceted, which are more angled, yes, like flat surfaces basically, and those don't lock together as well. So that's one form of instability. Is when you have a temperature gradient. Yes, and if you have a lot of those faceted flakes, it's going to be called a depth whore h O a R. And a horror is uh is the light like you can even kind of see them on like sunny days, this sort of shiny crystally surface um layer on top that's like not really bonded exactly. It's frost is another word for it, like horror. Like avalanche, we should name this avalanches the disaster with the most jargon because there's a lot of jargon involved in avalanches. There is. We've already skipped over some of it. Like rhyme, Well, yeah, rhyme is when um, yeah, it's basically have you ever seen like a a ship going through the Arctic and it has like globules of ice, or like a tree collecting ice. That's rhyme where it's just basically a bunch of water turns into ice really quick and accumulates quickly. That's rhyme. Horrors frost rhyme is like globules of ice. What about a grapple? Uh, that is when you have deposits of rhyme that build up and form pellets of snow. Yeah, but they're not stable even though they're pellets, like yeah, which kind of flies in the face because I thought round was more stable. I think they're larger though, Yeah, I think they're like spherical, whereas round is like flat and rounded edges. So pellets are like yeah those things. You know, you get a handful of those yellow pellets, roll them around in your palms like so, and you're gonna see like it, there's no friction there. It overcomes friction. That's true. Uh, if you have you can also get rounding if if it's a low temperature gradient and you get a lot of um subfreezing going on, and it's gonna cause the rounding, which is actually good. That's gonna make it more stable. Like we were talking about UM. So you've got temperature gradient, you've got rounding from UM a low temperature gradiment. You have different types of snow that accumulate. If fascinating is can that be a verb? I just made it one. Yeah, fascinating, Yeah, fascinating is Basically it's another type of metamorphosis where snowflake undergoes a change in the snowpack after it's already fallen. It's just laying there like you think when snowfalls it's it's felt, but now it's going through some changes. Basically, a puberty of snow is what happens in the snowpack. And when fascinating happens, it's the opposite of rounding. Those edges become um more pronounced, more angular and um. A snowflake can turn into what's called depth or h O A R again uh, and it's pretty cool. Did you see the picture of depth hor It's the coolest looking snowflake you can find that it's pretty cool, Like it looks carved out like, UM, it looks three D printed, basically, doesn't it do? UM a piece of machinery or something. But from the looks of it, it looks like it would just totally lock in with any other snowflake. But for some reason that's not the case. So when you get depth Horor's is a very faceted snow packed snowflake. UM, it's not going to lead to a stable snowpack. None of these are basically everything except rounding UM leads to an unstable snow pack. That's right, And that's one of the triggers or one of the factors involved in an avalanche. That's right. What you have is if you have a failure level layer, and that's the weak layer inside the snowpack. It's called the failure layer because it fails you and causes the av inch. It fills everybody, but it can be caused by a lot of things. Uh, the things we're just mentioning and uh, depending on some other factors. Is how it's gonna deal with that failure level. UM, it can slough off the snow, and I think most people have seen that is when you see like the inverted V shape loose powdery snow coming down a mountain that is slough and that is not super dangerous. It usually doesn't do a lot of damage. Um, So that's not like the worst case scenario now, and slough is the result of Typically the failure layer is high up in the snow pack, so it's just some surface snow that's going to move as part of the avalanche. Yeah. If it's deeper, then you're gonna get the the bad boy of the avalanche scene, which is the slab avalanche. And that's when the failure layer is deep down and it's gonna bring obviously a lot more compact big chunks sliding down over that that bed layer, or it could be a huge chunk, a single chunk. Um reminiscent of when uh, you have a lot of snow on your windshield and the sun comes out and heats it and the glass becomes warmer, so the bottom of it loses friction and stability and slides down all at once. That's right. That's basically a mini slab avalanche happening on your car. Yeah. And if if it's wet um your slab, it's gonna be slower, which sounds good. Um, but it's gonna hit with more force. It has more water to it has more mass and volume, more weight babe. Yeah. Um, So let's talk about that slope. If they generally happen between five and sixty and most common between and forty five degrees, uh, is when you're gonna get an avalanche. If it's more than that steeper than that, then it's just gonna be sloughing constantly and probably not be a danger. And if it's less than that, then it's not enough of the slope to cause any problems. Yeah, it's not really going to move very much, if at all. It's just called party time on the mountain. There's also other factors, um that contribute to whether an area's avalanche prone or not. To like, Um, if it's on the um sunny side of the mountain where it gets a lot of morning sun, uh, it will actually warm up and and basically settle. The ice pack settles and becomes more stable than on the shadier side of the mountain. Same with leeward and windward. Both of these I thought was the opposite of how it should be. I had that same problem too, because they say specifically, the Freese thaw cycle can can create like a layer of ice in the snowpack that will be a failure layer eventually. So if it's in the sun every day, I mean it's slightly melting a little bit, right, then you know, why wouldn't that also be the case. I didn't get to the bottom of that one. I have no idea, but that's what I kept coming across, and source after source the same thing with Like you said, leeward, it means it's it's on the opposite side of the wind, and I would think that being on the windy side would be more dangerous. Well, no, because that causes slough the wind like blood. Okay, I guess that makes sense. That one makes sense. It's the sunny side that's just confusing. Yeah, I still say a strongest of wind could cause a slab. I'm gonna I'm gonna fly in the faces of the experts. And then um they also rate and not right like this is a five star avalanche, the best I've seen all season. They have um a rating scale from R one D one to R five D five And yes, nerds, there is an R two D two avalanche. I guess you mean me, because that was gonna be my first question. I sent you the chart, okay, but I'm still gonna ask. So the R is the size of the avalanche relative to the path that takes into account it's width, its length, its depth, the size of the avl lanch our. One is laughable. Our five is the whole side of the mountain just came down. What's an R two D two. It's a little above laughable. It's more like a woe. It's kind of like you would imagine R two D two is an avalanche, you know, all right? Uh? And then our five D five the D stands for destructive force, and that like in an R five D five, the D of that avalanche can like gouge the earth. It's it's moving with such power and intensity, and they can go up to I think one point nine miles um, traveling almost two miles at a at a solid with a solid chunk. Pretty scary stuff. Yeah, it's scary stuff. And before we get to even more stuff, let's take an message break. All right, Okay, so I believe we're talking scary things, and what can be scarier than avalanche triggered by a yodeler we've already said that's not the case. Yeah, it's three times. Um. Usually, well, sometimes it can be Usually it's people, but sometimes it can be a natural thing, like if a tree falls, or if the weather really changes quickly. Um, what else, Um, the big chunk of ice falling off a tree could trigger it. Yeah, a cornice Um, basically, a an ice pack can build up over a cliffs edge and just kind of hang there, and then eventually that the it'll collapse under its own weight and it can fall onto a ridge line below. That can definitely trigger trigger an avalanche. But in most cases it's people. Yeah. And apparently in most fatal avalanches, the person who dies in the avalanche triggered it in most cases. Oh yeah, karmic nature. I guess it seems a little a little harsh, Yeah, a little imbalanced. Yeah, I agree. Uh. All right, So let's say you have an avalanche happening. There are gonna be three parts to this avalanche. You've got your starting zone, which is above the tree line, and that's where the slab actually, that's the top part where it breaks free. It's also known as a crown. A crown that makes sense. Then you have your track and that's basically just the path that it takes. Uh. You're gonna if you go to like these mountains in the summertime, you might see that track uh as a big open area of green grass between trees. Yeah, because the avalanches wipe the trees off of that slope. So like if you're if you're unclear on whether avalanches are powerful, Yes, they take out trees on their way down and houses and ski condos and yeah, skiers, which is another reason why they're so dangerous for someone caught in the avalanche because it's not only the snow that may or may not bury you, you're also getting pummeled across against stuff on your way down because of the force of the avalanche bouring you along, like being whacked into a tree or something. Yeah. Uh. And then you've got your run out is the third segment, and that is where it comes to a sliding slow stop and that is bad news because it's it's they liken it to concrete in this article and it just sets up super hard and if you're underneath it, h you've got you know, fifteen minutes or so to get yourself out of there, or it's bye bye to life. Like the clock is ticking. Yeah, apparently most people say that you can survive buried in an avalanche for about eighteen minutes. That's tops. And the best way to survive an avalanche is to never start one. And there's techniques that um well, basically government local governments that um where mountains and ski slips are situated, and then ski resorts will higher ski patrols basically go out and test. And there's actually people who are called avalanche avalanche forecasters and they I guess, study the snowfall, the the atmospheric conditions, like if there's been a freeze thaw cycle, and they can predict roughly like when or where an avalanche may happen, and they say, point the howitzerer that way, and they'll make sure people are off of the slope, and they shoot artillery at slopes that try to trigger avalanches. That's one way to do it. And that's why that's where it reminded me of wildfires, um doing controlled burns and stuff like that, like, oh yeah, they'll actually set off an avalanche to keep an avalanche from happening. But that's really don't wait. Well, there's also ski checking, which seems kind of but that's almost like, um yeah, uh, I guess it is a little bit. It's it's a mind bogglingly dangerous sounding. Yeah, it's a job where you on purpose get on your skis and ski along the fracture line, um, to see what happens, to try to trigger trying to trigger it, and then they're gonna quickly try and outrun it. Yes, and they're hopefully skiing at the fracture line at the top of it, like around the crown, rather than inside the avalanche zone. You don't want to be there, so it would it would fall out below them rather than carry them down. And if you're ski checking, you're you're never ski checking alone. You're always part of a team and everybody's watching you, and you have a beacon on and all the other stuff that you're supposed to have. But it's still one of the more dangerous things I think you can do in snow. Yeah. I hope we have a listener that does this because I'd love to know more about it. Ski checking, Yeah, yeah, I'd like to hear that too. Some of the other things they can do to prevent uh or interrupt an avalanche that happens is to put the like physical objects in place to prevent it, like nets and anchors and fences and stuff like that, and that if an avalanche starts, at least they can divert it or stop it quicker, or maybe prevent it from happening to begin with. Sometimes they'll hire local teens to just stand there and link arms, stand in the Yeah, the red rover approach. It depends on where you live. Estonia is huge on that level prevention. Uh, they can happen anytime. They're most common in the winter obviously, but they can happen in any month. And um, usually in the first like twenty four hours after a big snowfall, it's going to be a little more likely. I guess things haven't settled in quite yet. Yes, And um, heavily logged areas, areas that have been denuded of trees because trees all taken together can kind of serve as anchors for a snowpack. So they're trying to reforest areas is a big, a big thing now And I wonder I didn't find this out, But I wonder also if trees represent a kind of a crack in a large snow pack too, In that like if there was a piece that was coming off, it would take less with it because it would eventually reach a tree. In that tree would represent a break in that connectiveness in the larger snowpack. I'm going to say yes, I would say yes to that just makes sense. Yeah, But the problem is people like to do things like what are called back country sports in places where there aren't trees. Yeah. I mean, the majority of avalanche victims are youngish dudes who, let's be honest, they're out there with their snowboard. They're getting dropped in by a helicopter where there's plenty of Dowdets. Who's who snowboard too? Yeah, that's true. But they did say males is the most one, so I think that's a fact. Oh yeah, okay, yeah, Um they're bros, you know, they're ski bros. Um Man, I can't believe. I guess I do believe that. But the person who causes the avalanche is the person who most likely dies. It's just yeah. And the reason why is because when you're when you accidentally trigger trigger this avalanche, it doesn't you're not you're on a on a line, a fault line basically that you're triggering. But It doesn't necessarily mean that everything's gonna happen below you. You could be skiing right through this slab and the stuff above you is gonna come down too, So like this whole slabs is gonna come down with you in the middle of it. Which, so you're the one who triggered it. You're the one who got buried alive too. All right, Well, we don't want that to happen to anybody, So, uh, how can we? I guess we should talk about how to do your diligence as a back country bro. Yeah, well you should do so basically, Um, you before you go out, you want to check with any local UM message boards or websites that have avalanche warnings, the bro hotline, right yeah, you want to call be like is there going to be right? Um? And there's like people who are paid to monitor this kind of thing and alert the public. So step one is to know whether there's a high likelihood of an avalanche happening where you are. Um. You also want to have taken a course in surviving avalanches. If you're doing this hardcore back country stuff, then hopefully you've done that beforehand. And there's a lot to learn to like this isn't we're just kind of scratching the surface here. Like there is a lot too to know to understand avalanches, to be able to forecast them, and to test like doing field tests. Um, so you want to really know what you're doing before you go out. You always want to go with somebody else. Gotta have a brow, buddy. The thing that I think you would just have to be a total idiot to not have is a beacon, yes of functioning beacon on you at all times, beneath your clothes so it can't be swept away. Uh yeah. And you want that set to transmit if you're the uh the person the transmit tour um, so they can find you when you're buried dying in fifteen minutes. They're not expensive, they're not um, they're not hard to come by. And you if you go out doing anything in any bad country sport and you don't have one on again, Josh Clark thinks you're an idiot. And well we may as well go ahead and talk about a couple of other pieces of equipment that you should have if you're into this. Um. They have these little backpacks now that have air bags in them. Um that you basically like pull a little ripcord in a big pillowy bag erupts sort of like a car airbag outside the top of it. And what that's gonna do is take up a bunch of space so you have air to breathe um once you're buried, and you have you know, a big hole of air at least right. Plus it also has the effect of um. If you ever have a like a canister of mixed nuts and you shake it, you'll notice like the bigger nuts, the brazil nuts all moved to the top. Yeah. Uh, same thing with you and an inflatable vest, you become bigger, so you will move towards the top of the avalanche slab and some padding in case there's debris. And then the other cool thing is called the the avalon a V A l U NNG and those are usually built into your backpack two And it's super simple. All it is is a it's sort of like a little scuba mouthpiece that you breathe through. And what it does is it diverts your exhalation down through the backpack and out like your where your butt is. Because the danger there is if you're trapped under snow and we'll get there in a second. Um, you're gonna have a small like pocket of air and one of the ways you can die is from poisoning yourself with with your CEO two. That's right. So if you got the avalon and you got your air bag and your backpack, your beacon, your beacon and maybe an inclinometer to see what that slope is before you go tackle it with your snowboard and say, bro, that one's degrees. Well, what do you want to be above sixty? Yeah? Geez I know that's awfully close to Yeah, maybe then go towards the slope. You also want to do some tests too, like where you're going to be skiing, snowboarding, high marking. Yea, be proactive. You want to dig what's called a quick pit, which is basically you become an amateur. Um, what is this snow person like smell a sense of snow Avalanchiologists. No, no, snowologists. It is a snow ologist. But there's a word. Right, you want to become an amateur Santa clause. You dig a pit. Um that affords you a view of all the layers of the snowpack, so you can basically visually inspect it for a failure layer. Um. There's other tests you can do as well, um that we won't get into. But if you're going to go out there, they should be teaching you this in your UM in your back country survival class. Yeah, of course class, sure, um. But you can also familiarize yourself on the U. S. Forest Service UM website. They have a bunch of step by step instructions with pictures for testing for avalanches. Yeah. And we looked at these and it's just no, it doesn't do any good to try and describe it. We would just get you killed and go look at the diagrams. Yeah. Uh. And you also wanna, you know, prick up your ears and listen for wamping noises or hollow sounds and avoid shady or it is like, just keep your eyes peeled. If you're experienced out there, then you you're probably gonna know what to look for. Yeah. And then there's one other thing too. If you see tracks already in a snowpack, that does not mean that it's already been tested and is safe. No, that means you can go that way right, No, it means that the person who went before you is lucky technically possibly and the last one never never travel above your partner, Like, oh yeah, that's a big one. Yeah. If your partner gets above you, then they're being very selfish, yes, or to kill you or you Yeah, yeah, you should wonder. Wait that travel insurance policy I signed, Now I get it. So if you've done all this, you do you you know how to do a rash block test, and you know how to dig a quick pit faster than anybody else, and you're you never travel above your partner and you still just triggered an avalanche. You've done everything right. But it's it's real, right, you're the person, you're the victim. Let's say, yes, all right, we're gonna give advice for two people, the victim and then the person who sees it and goes, oh my gosh, the witness. That guy just got buried. Um, all right, So if you're one of the brow victims, you're three ways you can die u physical trauma. Like we said, let's say you get smashed by a tree on the way down. You can suffocate in the snow or die of hypothermia. Pick. None of those are good. Uh, if you find that the avalanche is happening. This is before you're buried alive. Uh. And let's say you're a skier or a snowmobile or or some other extreme sports person. Um they say to try and like outski it and outright it if you can, um, you know, get the little rear view herreor going and hit the gas as quick as you can, um ski off the slab. And if you can do that, then great. If you can't, then you may be buried. And the first thing you want to do is block your mouth so it doesn't fill up with snow. And you want to, you know, try and like put your arm over it or block it as much as possible if you don't have one of those air bags, because whatever little space you create in front of your mouth is your breathable air. You want to use one arm or your hand or something, and with the other arm or leg or whatever you can, you want to thrust it toward whatever you think is up trying to get some sort of visual cue of where you are two people and they see just a swimming motion that's on your way down. You're trying to basically swim your way to the top of the of the pile of the slab that's carrying you down. Well. Yeah, and then once you start to come to a stop, then you throw your hand in front of your mouth and you try to thrust the leg up or something like that. What I read though, is you're gonna be so disoriented you'll have good luck with any of this. That's like punching a shark. Yeah, but some people can do it. Yeah, it happens. Some people have the presence of mind to do it. Those people are the ones who these instructions are for. Right. Uh. They advise you to bail on your ski gear. Um, if you have one of those backpacks though, Um, with all your emergency gear, obviously you want to hang onto that. Um. Here's the hardest part. Why stay calm, Yeah, stay calm um. They advise you, if you are honest snowmobile and you get removed from it. I don't know how you would do this, but try and get out of the path of the snowmobile as well, because that will kill you. But again, this is all happening so fast. It's just I guess you rely on instinct. I guess, so you turn into a steely nerved dude. Brouh. And then again staying calm, stay calm, You're now buried under snow, and the best advice is to stay home. You don't start screaming because you're burning your oxygen. No one's gonna hear you because they're still pretty far away. Hopefully they have they watched you the whole time. We'll get into that in a second, um, And you just have to do what you can by conserving your energy, conserving your breath, and conserving your voice until you hear somebody above you. Then you can start screaming as loud as you want, but there's no sense in screaming whatsoever until you hear somebody. Um, and then you better have that beacon on. If you have that beacon on, you set to transmit. You're with one or more other people who were with you when this happened. Hopefully they're not buried to your chances are actually pretty good. There's something like a survival rate um for people who are dug out with in the first fifteen minutes. Yeah, that's pretty quick though. So I guess that brings us to if you are the other bro and you see this happen to your friend, Um, this is what you're gonna want to do because you were there first. Help like you may not have enough time. You know, you got fifteen to eighteen minutes. You may not have enough time to ski to the rescue unit to get word out. So it's sort of up to you to try and uh get your buddy out. Yeah. If you're in a larger group, then yeah, you send some people back for help, and then some other people stay to conduct the search and rescue themselves. If it's just you, Basically, every bit of advice is, if you have any idea of where they went down, where do you think they might be, go straight there. Yeah, And it's sort of like, uh, following your golf shot, Like if it starts to happen, you don't want to look around for help or anything. You want to lock your eyeballs on your buddy and follow that as long as you can until he completely disappears. And wherever he disappears or she, that is your last Uh, that's the point of reference you're gonna want to hit first. Yeah, you want to just keep your eyes on that point and go straight to it. Um you uh, basically you want to wait a second. Well, it could be another avalanche. Yeah, you want to make sure the snow is settled. Um. And then you go over to the area where you last saw the person and you take your own beacon. Because the cool thing about beacons is not only do they transmit, they receive, So any anybody with a beacon can transmit for help and receive to lend help. Right. Yeah, So when you do that, if you're just one person, you go to the last place you saw the person and you start your search using your transponder and you start doing zig zagging motions down the mountain. Yeah, basically, you do a sweep of the avalanche area. You do a sweep. You might have something called an avalanche probe on you, and that's super long ten or twelve foot pole that collapses down to a couple of feet so you can have it in your low backpack and you know, it's basically a big poker that you can poke down in the snow. If you hear your buddy go, then that's great. And then um, some ski poles also have like like the bottoms come off so that they can be turned into um avalanche pokers. And hopefully you have a shovel on you, because that is highly recommended as well. I don't think they ever pointed that out. Yeah, you can shovel a lot faster. You can move snow a lot faster with a shovel with your hands. So if you have a beacon, a probe, and a shovel, you could be Okay, that's a T shirt. Yeah, and the other side is a guy like falling off the snows. Uh. So you said zigzagging if you're by yourself. If you're with a group of folks, they recommend that you lock arms and um sort of like you know, when you're searching for a dead body in the woods, you just set up a line of people to cover as much ground as possible, and then if you find your body, dig them out and uh, treat them as quickly as possible. They may need a little CPR, they may need a little t So turn on our CPR podcast your friends. Yeah, remember staying alive. Oh yeah, and just pump the chest to the beat of staining alive and everything will be all right. That's right. Uh. And I've got nothing else do you I don't either, Um no, that's about it. Or if you want to avoid this stuff altogether, you do like me and don't ski? Yeah, no bad country sports for you. Huh No, I mean I used to ski, but I was never very good. And uh, once you hit a certain age and you're not a great skier, it's like, why why even go out there. I've got a fifty percent chance of injuring myself. I would say you'd probably have a higher percentage chance than that. You think, Yeah, man, I took a I was in Vermont skiing one time and I took a spill that It was sort of like Chevy Chase and Christmas Vacation. I slid. I had to have slid half a mile down this mountain without being able to stop myself on my butt without my skis, and a little twelve year old maybe snowboarder snowboarded down with my skis. Stuck him in next to me and said, dude, I've never seen someone slide that far in my life. And he snowboarded off, and I said, well, you're pretty young, but yeah, it was pretty entertaining to see. I'm sure, and this is when I was younger. It would be much funnier now even Oh yeah, you know, like when the old guy falls, it's always funny. That's I mean, like you said, Chevy Chase movies. I do have one more thing, Chuck. It turns out the St. Bernard as a mountain rescue dog with its whiskey your brandy cask around its neck, supposedly as a myth like they did that. They did have St. Bernard's in the Alps and all that, and um, they did use them to like carry supplies and stuff and sometimes even spirits around their neck, but whatever uses like, they were never used as like ski patrol avalanche rescue dogs. They were just in the same area that avalanche has happened in a lot and they just happen to have booze around their necks. I call that confirmed. M all right, Well, just the popular conception that is St. Bernard is going to run up to you and dig you out and then yeah, yes, it's not correct. It's a napoleonic lie. I am going to say that has happened once, okay, because I want to think it happened. It's pretty cool and St. Bernards are cool dogs, to be sure. Uh, if you want to know more about avalanches, like we said, if you're serious about back country sports, you better go take a course. You better go to the park services website on avalanches. Get that beacon, dude, Yes, or else Josh Clark thinks you're a dummy. Um. And you can also go to how stuff works dot com and type in Avalanche in the search bar there. And since I said all that, that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this defiling history. And this dude purposefully said, if you read this, please don't show Josh because I I want to hear his reaction. So here we go. Hey, guys, I was listening to the Fourth of July Extravaganza from a few years back, uh, and realized I might have ruined a piece of American history a few years ago about a thicker, older book, looking to hollow it out so I could keep money and other important items in there that I wanted, uh, that I didn't want to keep in my personal safe. He's not. A few days ago, I was listening to the part two of that Fourth of July extravaganza and on the way back to University of Wisconsin, Go Badgers, and I heard you talking about the book Epic of America. Do you remember talking about that? Vaguely? Yes. As we had guest hosts, we had Joe and Dazzo and Wyatt Senac in Joe Garden and Halle Haglind so they may have reference that book, but I don't remember that. I knew that was the name of the book I bought to hollow out, but thought, surely it wasn't the same book. I got home, took a closer look, and it turns out I was wrong. Upon further research, I found I had bought a first edition, uh one bona fide copy of Epic of America by James tres Low Adams, and I cut a hole in the middle of it. I thought it's somewhat ironic I chose to fill the Epic of America with money. Nonetheless, I'm distraught with my lack of knowledge and accidental disregard for one of the great analyzes of the American dream, that is from Grant. Hermit's here we go, Grant. That's this reaction, Grant indignation. He's ticked. You know, we got um hollowed out books from the guys who make Rick and Morty Yeah, adult swim, Yeah, hollowed out to fit perfectly a flask, the Rick and Morty flask. It was pretty neat. Thanks for that. Why don't you get one of those? Grant and I thought when I saw that book, I thought, well, that's neat. They sent us a book and it was called like interesting science stuff or something like that. I think it was called boring Science. Of boring Science's ward people away from the book. You want to want to read that all right? Then you open it up and you're like, WHOA, I've got it on my bar right now. That's awesome. Where else would it be? I guess on my shelf. You're at work, in your work bag with you at all times. H If you want to tell us about some bonehead thing you did with a piece of Americana or anything else we want to hear about it, you can tweak to us at s Y s K Podcast. You can join us on our Facebook page at Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and as always, hang out with us at our home on the web, the Ill Chill Crib Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com