One of the greatest dangers we face on winter expeditions is the risk of avalanches. It is a difficult phenomenon to predict and extremely dangerous. In a few seconds tons of snow begin to fall down and, if you are in the wrong place and time, it can be fatal. This year in Manaslu it is snowing a lot and the avalanches are continuous. We hear enormous roars and sometimes we feel the shock waves that they generate. The truth is, they produce a lot of respect.
To minimize risks, it is necessary to be prepared and take all possible precautions. Our friends from Elur (http://www.elur-equipment.com/) and Sergio Pérez Fernández are doing a very important job in this regard and we keep continuously in touch with them. They help us a lot. Safety is basic in any expedition and we have to try to read the mountain well. Try to predict when a route is safe and when it is not. I leave you with this text prepared by the friends from Elur team, which I believe explains very well the dangers of the mountains:
“As we already know, mountain activities involve a significant level of risk. This is even more present if we talk about mountains in winter, since we add new elements that can endanger our safety. One of the most lethal elements, and even more so when we talk about mountains as big as the ones we face in our expeditions, are avalanches.
During the current expedition of our colleague Álex Txikon to Manaslu in 2021-2022 the team is facing the hardest face of this mountain, since they have suffered snowfalls of more than 2 meters in Base Camp. These abundant precipitations, together with the fact that there is no stable base of snow in the deepest layers, mean that they are living with a 5/5 level of avalanche risk, the highest on the European scale.
As Álex has well said in many of his talks, 92% of mountain accidents are human-caused, that is, possibly avoidable. When we move in terrain with such a high risk of avalanches, it is important to follow a method based on having the correct equipment, training and recycling, having weather forecasts, analyzing the situation and making correct decision-making. As Álex says, the mountain will always be there and in a winter 8,000 mountain, there is no margin for error.
At Elur Equipment we are focused on the development of our avalanche rescue device, but we also work on the rest of this process, since if the analysis steps are done methodically and we bet on the safest option, we can avoid many high-risk situations and save lives
In addition, we do not want to miss the opportunity to thank Sergio Pérez Fernández for his invaluable help in analyzing the current situation at Manaslu.
As we always say, explore your limits, do it safe. “