Australian Alpine Hazards

This service exists to help inform backcountry travellers of the current and relevant hazards they may encounter in the Australian Alpine region during winter. We borrow from other countries’ best practices but have had to invent a ‘fit for purpose model’ for our unique mountains conditions.

Key Concepts: Any effective alpine hazard service has four key components. It must be timely, relevant, concise and trusted.

Timely
The risk management standard (ISO 31000) for a service such as this mandates daily reporting. Given the dynamic nature of the environment we are reporting on, out of date advice is a danger in itself. Always check the date of issue for the report you are reading to ensure you won’t fall foul of out of date reports.

Relevant
Our danger ratings have been developed from both extensive user group and international specialist consultation. Our service acknowledges that although elsewhere in the world avalanche is a primary hazard of concern, here in Australia this is not the case. Exposure, visibility, surface conditions and avalanche should all be considered for successful decision making.

Concise
We have three tiers of information from ‘light lift’ too ‘deep dive’ which follow in this order, Danger Rating, Hazards and Details.

Danger Rating will be explained below. The Hazards section is where to find specific information about the aspect, elevation and severity of a hazard displayed in handy infographic form. Then the Details section is the more in depth detail regarding the hazards, snowpack and weather. We also provide a confidence rating from strong to low which reflects how well we know what we know or how much we know we don’t know.

Trusted
The characteristics of trustworthy advice has always been transparency and accountability. MSC takes this very seriously having developed this service over 6 years. Our current Program Director holds a CAA Avalanche Operations Level 3 and has years of forecasting experience. He’s working with a cohort of professional field observers across Vic and NSW who bring probably a combined century of local experience in each region (CAA Operations Level 1 or equivalent). You can find out about most of us here. The field operations team is growing fast. If you are in Australia and on a CAA Ops pathway shout out here.

MSC is funded by Parks Victoria, Outdoor Victoria, National Parks & Wildlife Service NSW, commercial sponsors and our 900+ members to whom we are accountable.

Weather Conditions

As shown in figure 1.1 exposure leads to the greatest proportion of rescues in the Australian Alpine. Hypothermia is the associated condition. Exposure often compounds other incidents as a considerable contributing factor. The wind chill factor is the measure we use and the increment thresholds are shown below.

Visibility

Poor visibility can quickly confuse a party’s sense of direction and gauge of distance travelled leading to navigational error and just straight old ‘getting lost’. We use three increments: Good Visibility, Poor Visibility (< 1km), and Whiteout (<50m).

Note: The numbers in the circles on the right are the ‘danger score’ that MSC attributes to all the hazards we observe. These will be explained below.

Surface Conditions

What we lack in ‘powder days’ in Australia we sure make up for in bulletproof ice. This could consist of rime, frozen rain or a melt / freeze crust. All nasty surface conditions that led to serious injury and fatalities. Not to be underestimated and can be managed with the effective use of crampons and ice axe.

Avalanche

Danger Ratings