"COLD SMOKE," I thought, my cheeks and chin losing feeling as I submarined into low density fluff between turns, weightless on the steeper pitch, laughing uncontrollably with the joy of perfect powder skiing. We were flying down Mt  Furano-dahke on a late January afternoon on the island of Hokkaido. We’d  been in Japan a week, skiing in Rusutsu and Niseko, checking out resorts and  side country with a tour on Mt Yotei, but this was our first day on Furano dahke. This was the first ski touring lap that was steep, sustained, perfect.  

The first week was everything I hoped Japan would be, with snow falling  continuously, no persistent weak layers, cold temps, and delicious hot ramen at mom-and-pop style ski hill cafeterias. We immersed ourselves daily in different onsens, each hot spring with a distinct layout and aesthetic. We used public transportation the first week, then returned to Sapporo to pick up a van to drive north, unable to read the Japanese kanji road signs. The  January sun sets shortly after four p.m., and the driving snow was suddenly our driving snow, as we navigated a dark, stormy night on the opposite side of the road. The van windshield resembled warp speed in a faraway galaxy. We pulled into the hostel on the edge of Furano and were greeted by Ishi.  

Ishi and Scott (my partner) skied together twenty years ago when Scott visited Bobby, his college roommate, who’s from Hokkaido. Ishi-san man ages the hostel and farm where we stayed, feeding the donkeys, horses, cats, and dogs before and after his daily ski touring missions. Ishi crafts his own  giant wooden tele skis in the barn and is a soul skier: one who has crafted a life around skiing deep, cold, powder every day possible. We met the next  morning at the trailhead and booted up and over the massive snowbank. In Shinto, the oldest religion in Japan, supernatural forces inhabit places  of natural beauty, and spirits can be present in all things: mountains, rivers, a forest.  

“Here we say good morning and thank you to the mountain,” Ishi-san  said, bowing toward the peak. “Arigatou gozaimasu… and we ask for safe journey and no avalanches.”  

We saw multiple guided groups but veered away from the skin track near the ridge and continued climbing for another hour. Ishi grinned, pointed  toward the area the guided groups were skiing, then pointed toward his secret stash, and pronounced in his accent, “Over here, many track. Over  here, many powder!” A loud howl of Japanese erupted from his full-face helmet as he dropped into the blue-white light, a cloud of snow trailing behind  him. I waited until his voice faded then followed. We leapfrogged the pitches until we’d descended into a shaded gully, breathless, laughing, and freezing, then climbed up to ski it again. After the second run, with the sun low, Ishi had to go back to the farm to feed the animals. I knew Scott didn’t want to leave. I read his mind; we’d had great skiing the week before, but nothing had  come close to this.  

“Maybe we should do one more? I mean, it’s perfect snow.” Ishi laughed. “Do you know Hara hachi bu?” 

We shook our heads. “Hara hachi bu is when you eat the very best sushi, perfect sushi… you eat to here (hitting his mid chest with the edge of his hand), not to here,” hitting  the edge of his hand to his forehead. 

As an avalanche educator, I’ve tried to teach the importance of safety margins. But this concept, Hara hachi bu, is more layered: not only should we maintain a margin, we need it most when things are going really well. Perfect sushi, perfect snow, perfect MTB trail; many of us live in pursuit of flow state. Hara hachi bu sagely advises us to quit while we’re ahead, perhaps because it’s the time when we least  want to. I’m not talking about the giggling ease of perfect low angle turns, but the free  fall euphoria of steep, cold powder, or rid ing tacky dirt just a little too fast for comfort, or running it out on perfect granite far above your last gear: there is an element of  risk that heightens the senses, brings us into the absolute present, where the body-mind  link feels absolute. If you’re a risk taker, the sense that you might be getting away with something in pursuit of perfection adds to the high.  

Flow state may block our ability to recognize when we’re narrowing our mar gin inadvertently, ignoring our intuition  because what we’re doing feels so good. Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, and Annie Duke, author of  Thinking in Bets, both cite various cognitive studies that prove that humans are skilled  in confirmation bias, or motivated reasoning, intentionally misinterpreting data to stick to our original plan. 

Nikki Champion, a forecaster with the Utah Avalanche Center, is studying risk perception among backcountry users in the Wasatch Mountain range. An avalanche  course student asked her if backcountry skiers are “just riskier people,” and Champion is working on answering the question with data from user surveys. These surveys  will examine risk preferences of backcountry users in comparison  to the general population, and whether risk-taking behaviors correlate with a variety of factors, including age, gender, imposter syndrome, backcountry experience, and education.

Multiple studies (McCammon 2000, Greene and Logan 2022)  have shown that avalanche training does not, in a statistically significant way, correlate with a reduction in the overall risk taken by avalanche victims. These studies have primarily looked at recreational  users. Doug Workman, who has guided heli-skiing in Valdez,  Alaska, for twenty years, and ski mountaineering and climbing  from the Arctic to the Antarctic, has concerns, for both recreationalists and professionals. 

“Take a group of six-year-olds. They’ve known each other a couple years in school, some of them all their lives. Ask them to line themselves up along the wall, risk takers at this end, non-risk-takers  at that end, and they’ll do it in two minutes. They know themselves; they know each other. Got it? Ok. ‘Risk takers? You’re more likely  to get caught in an avalanche.’ It is our tolerance for risk and prioritization of pleasure that dictates outcomes more than our aware ness of hazard. That’s what we need to teach people. Snow science— for entry level users and professionals—can be a very dangerous  distraction and often over-complicates rather simple problems.” 

Doug’s worry, or criticism, of avalanche education, particularly on the  professional track, is that we are teaching ourselves and each other how to outsmart the snowpack. 

Workman acknowledges that tracking weak layers certainly has its place in the professional realm but stresses the need for “a far more critical and  narrow framework as to how these pits are used, when they are used, and how they are interpreted.” The recent volume of The Avalanche Review (TAR) included a round table discussion, “Incremental: Forecasting Strategies For Incremental Loading of  Persistent Weak Layers,” (43.2 pp 18–23), in which Ben VandenBos talked about “not being married to our mental models” and paying attention to reality. Workman fears that, as guides, we “still believe stability tests unlock  liability, provide ‘aha’ insight into the stability trend, and—generally— provide the key to the castle…” 

In two vast arenas likely at the pinnacle of ski guiding, touring in the deep  backcountry of British Columbia, and helicopter skiing in the Chugach of  Valdez, Alaska, guides dig hasty pits or test plus pits at the top of ski runs  and perform stability tests. They track persistent weak layers and record cms of snow and snow water equivalent, look at grains under loupes, and record rounding and sintering throughout the season. Workman criticizes the current track of avalanche education because he thinks we’re often using  it to justify our agenda. “It’s not about the f@&king science! It’s risk takers vs non-risk-takers, and we’re all hypocrites if we say it’s not. We tell people to focus on the big picture, and then we pull out a microscope.” Workman has lost too many friends close enough to be family in his career, and as he  talked about the flaws in avalanche decision-making as a whole, I imagined  him holding a door closed behind him, pushing his own ghosts from the  center back to the edges of his consciousness.  

In fairness, the pits dug by guides in those operations are presumably in  terrain that was opened, either in the a.m. guide meeting or days earlier, and  are being used to track known weak layers throughout a season. Speculating that a guide would open a run purely based on her pit results is a reach,  and counters everything taught in avalanche education, particularly in the  professional realm. Yet in Todd Guyn’s 2016 ISSW paper “Ten Common  Missteps of Avalanche Practitioners,” Guyn lists impatience with conditions,  an example being trusting a persistent weak layer before we should; he also  lists trying to outwit the avalanche hazard. Workman’s idea that we can use  science to talk ourselves into bad decisions, and ignore real time signs telling  us to retreat, is well established.  

Psychologists Richard West and Keith Stanovich published a study in 2012  on what they called the “blind spot bias,” referenced by both Kahneman and Duke, and found it to be worse in more cognitively sophisticated subjects.  The counter argument to this might be Iain Stewart-Patterson’s 2010 ISSW paper, “What Does Your Gut Say and Should You Listen? The Intuitive Analytical Decision Making Continuum In Mechanized Ski Guiding,” in  which he argues that our intuitive response is influenced by our expertise,  and, with enough time, should complement our analytical decision making. Stewart-Patterson explains that intuition is heightened and improved  by having greater situational awareness, something that only years in the  field can instill. 

I asked Workman how we protect the risk takers, how we save ourselves if  we know that we’re amongst those bolder six-year-olds.  

“How do I help my avalanche students? Or… myself?” I asked. “Build margin. Just for an exercise, what if I asked you to ski a season without performing a single stability test? My guess is it would force you  to make decisions that highlight what you don’t know, rather than distract ing yourself with minutiae that you do—and I’m not suggesting not making  observations, I’m not saying don’t pay attention—I’m saying pay attention to  the big picture.” Workman simultaneously shook his head, acknowledging  the inherent difficulty with this, reminiscent of his conversation on Utah  Avalanche Center forecaster Drew Hardesty’s podcast. Hardesty titled it  “The Big Lie;” he and Workman talked about the inconsistency in ski guides  preaching safety to their cli ents and each other, having already chosen a very risky profession. 

There are systems used by  professional operations to  increase margin: the detailed  morning meeting, check lists, run lists, and, ideally, operationalized skepticism.  Workman lumps powder skiing with cocaine or sex addiction; how can we be  trusted to make safe choices, or self-preserving decisions, when we are seeking a rush?  Guyn also identified “acting  too much on emotion” as one  of practitioners’ missteps.  Flow state is feeling, not thinking. 

“We can increase our mar gin, but that’s not very fun if that’s not your natural disposition.” Workman has settled, ultimately, on fewer days in  the mountains, reducing his exposure. To that end, he has pursued a second career away from guiding and has intentionally limited his personal recreational days.  

IFMGA guide Emilie Drinkwater implements wide margins while  guiding, a practice she attributes to  a “nagging fear of endless potential consequences, which run the gamut  from being benighted or hungry to  having myself or clients caught in  an avalanche.” Drinkwater acknowledges a goal of keeping those wide  margins on personal missions but  is self-aware enough to recognize more risk tolerance when recreating  without clients. Like Workman, she  maintains her personal margin by  reducing exposure, choosing not to go on high altitude expeditions every  summer, not skiing consequential terrain when she knows there’s a PWL present, and relishing her indoor time. 

Drinkwater also reflected on lessons learned over time. “In order  to make good decisions, you have  to live through some bad ones and  have the humility to learn from  mistakes… Error correction and  humility go hand in hand because  admitting (often out loud) mis takes can be embarrassing and  would suggest a lack of knowledge.  Personally, I make tons of mistakes (in life, guiding, etc), but I've reached an age and experience level where I'm unabashedly comfortable admit ting them and changing course. The more one does this, the less mistakes  they make, which is a funny contradiction.” 

Dave Richards, former Alta Avalanche Office Director, says that “only time teaches mastery… yet many people take an avalanche course seek ing mastery of the craft; we know this to be impossible.” He thinks this can increase students’ risk taking “based on a misunderstanding of what they think they know.”

This was supported by McCammon and McNeill’s 2024 ISSW paper, “Risk Management Trends in U.S. Backcountry Avalanche Accidents.” Avalanche training has not decreased avalanche exposure among U.S. victims of avalanches. Despite a large increase in the number of backcountry users over the past several decades, however, avalanche fatalities remain static. They concluded that while “public messaging, avalanche education, and rescue technology are saving lives,” educated accident victims had, in many cases, overestimated their ability to “manage the avalanche danger they were trying to avoid.” They suffered from overconfidence, or lack of humility. Richards talked about this in his piece, “Are we Teaching Confidence Over Competence in Avalanche Education?” (TAR 38.1 Oct 19).

Humility, restraint, and deference to the group have historically been central to Japanese culture and Shinto. U.S. culture, in contrast, generally tends  to celebrate the individual (a trend encouraged and exaggerated by social  media). Notable exceptions exist in some high functioning groups, though.  In a recent Avalanche Hour podcast (S9 Ep 1 Oct 24), IFMGA guide Jeff  Banks talked about working with a Special Forces team and their practice of  openly sharing their individual weaknesses with the team to prioritize the  success of the mission. In “Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error,”  Katherine Schultz talks about our perspective as humans being informed by  where we stand and being inherently flawed because we can never see the  back of our own head. She points out that humility allows us to be informed  by relying on the perspective, the wisdom, of the group.  

Hara hachi bu reminds us to practice humility, patience, or more sim ply, to quit while we’re ahead. The trick is in keeping a grip on reality and  remaining situationally aware so that we don’t allow our feel-good bias to  blind us to risk. We wanted it all that day on Furano-dahke, but we ceded  to Ishi’s wisdom, reaching the cars before dark (though not long before).  We bowed to the mountain once more, embracing Shintoism, gliding gently  into the present by thanking the hills and trees and snow for our safe return. I’ve no doubt that I’ll remain at risk of using up my margin on future mis sions, though I’m hoping to at least recognize when I’m in danger of doing  so by staying mindful, situationally aware, and humble... even while skiing  the best powder of my life.  

IFMGA guide Emilie Drinkwater  implements wide margins while guiding, a practice she attributes to  a “nagging fear of endless potential  consequences, which run the gamut  from being benighted or hungry to  having myself or clients caught in an avalanche.” Drinkwater acknowledges a goal of keeping those wide  margins on personal missions but  is self-aware enough to recognize  more risk tolerance when recreating  without clients. Like Workman, she  maintains her personal margin by reducing exposure, choosing not to go on high altitude expeditions every  summer, not skiing consequential terrain when she knows there’s  a PWL present, and relishing her indoor time. 

JENNA MALONE works at Alta as a part time ski patroller/ mitigator, teaches for the American Avalanche Institute, and  guides for Wasatch Powderbird Guides and Utah Mountain  Adventures. She also works as a PA in Trauma and Critical  Care at Intermountain Medical Center. She has spent multiple  seasons as a medical provider for Denali Rescue Volunteers  and is on the DRV board. She’s presented at multiple Snow  and Avalanche Workshops in and has contributed to The Avalanche Review and Ascent Backcountry Snow Journal.  

Photographer BEN VANDENBOS is on sabbatical from public avalanche forecasting. He is spending this winter chasing sunrises, sunsets, snow, and new angles on avalanche education. Ben writes a Substack that chronicles snow and avalanche conditions and avalanche accidents in the Western US. The goal of the project is to help readers watch avalanche conditions develop on a regional scale and to deepen their own local experience by understanding it in a broader context. Ben skis every day, often by himself, and recognizes the cumulative risk that this involves. As a human being who makes mistakes, he sets a goal of returning home safely.