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Avalanches kill people in the Australian backcountry. Not frequently — Australia has far fewer avalanche fatalities than alpine countries with larger backcountry populations — but they happen, and they happen to people who thought they were making safe decisions. Understanding why, and how to make genuinely safer decisions, starts here.
How Avalanches Form
An avalanche is a mass of snow moving rapidly down a slope. It happens when the stress on a layer of snow exceeds its strength — either because new load is added (fresh snowfall, wind deposition, a rider's weight) or because an existing weak layer loses strength over time.
The snowpack is not uniform. It develops in layers over the season, each layer corresponding to a snowfall event or weather period. The relationship between these layers — how well they bond, how much stress exists between them — determines avalanche risk. A weak layer buried under a stronger slab is the classic avalanche recipe: the slab fails at the weak layer when additional stress is applied.
The three variables that determine avalanche risk on any given slope: terrain (angle, aspect, shape), snowpack (layering, bonding, weak layers) and weather (recent snowfall, wind, temperature changes). Reading all three simultaneously is what avalanche training teaches you to do.
The Australian Snowpack — What Makes It Different
The Australian alpine snowpack is shallow compared to the continental snowpacks of the Alps, the Rockies or Japan. A depth of one to two metres is typical in Victorian high country during an average season. In poor seasons, the snowpack may be 50 centimetres or less across much of the terrain.
A shallow snowpack creates specific problems. Ground features — rocks, logs, vegetation — interact with the snowpack in ways that do not occur in deeper snowpack environments, creating stress points and weak zones that are harder to identify without experience. Temperature fluctuations that would be absorbed and moderated by a deep snowpack are more directly felt throughout a shallow one.
The Australian snowpack also sees significant temperature variability compared to cold continental climates. Warm spells — common in both Victoria and NSW during the season — can produce surface melt that refreezes as a hard ice crust when temperatures drop. This crust can become a weak layer if subsequent snowfall buries it before it bonds fully with the surrounding snowpack. Crust-based weak layers have caused a number of significant avalanche events in the Australian alpine area.
Reading Terrain — The First Line of Defence
Terrain management is the most effective avalanche risk reduction tool available. You cannot always predict what the snowpack is doing — but you can choose to travel in terrain where the consequences of an avalanche are manageable or minimal.
Avalanche terrain is defined by slope angle. Avalanches most commonly release on slopes between 30 and 45 degrees. Slopes below 25 degrees rarely produce avalanches. Slopes above 60 degrees tend to lose snow frequently in small amounts and rarely accumulate enough to produce a significant slide.
The Australian backcountry has avalanche terrain — slopes in the 30 to 45 degree range exist at Falls Creek, Hotham, Feathertop and throughout the Main Range. It also has a large amount of sub-avalanche terrain — gentle alpine meadows, moderate slopes, the wide open terrain of the Bogong High Plains — that is accessible and rewarding without requiring you to cross steep avalanche terrain to access it.
For beginner and intermediate Australian backcountry riders, staying in terrain below 25 to 30 degrees is both safer and more achievable than trying to read complex snowpack in steep terrain. As your training and experience develop, you develop the skills to assess steeper terrain accurately. Start conservative.
Red Flags — When to Turn Around
Certain conditions are reliable indicators of elevated avalanche risk. Any of these is a reason to reassess your terrain plans:
Recent avalanche activity: if you can see or hear avalanches running — either naturally or triggered by other riders — the snowpack is unstable. This is the clearest red flag available.
Cracking or whoumpfing: a cracking sound that propagates across the snowpack as you walk or skin is the snowpack failing at a weak layer without releasing — a warning that the weak layer is present and reactive. A whoumpf sound — a sudden subsidence underfoot — is the same signal. Both mean elevated instability.
Recent significant snowfall: 30cm of new snow in 24 hours significantly increases avalanche risk, particularly on wind-loaded aspects. The new snow load may be too great for the existing snowpack to support. Standard guidance is to wait for the snowpack to stabilise before entering steeper terrain after a significant loading event.
Wind loading: wind transports and deposits snow on lee aspects — the downwind side of ridges and terrain features. Wind-loaded slopes are denser and heavier than the surrounding snowpack and can fail more suddenly. Check wind direction and identify which aspects are likely to be wind-loaded before choosing your terrain.
Rapid warming: rapid temperature increases — particularly warm rain on snow — significantly weaken the snowpack and increase wet avalanche risk. In Australian conditions, warm weather events are common and wet avalanche cycles can be significant.
Companion Rescue — The Skills That Determine Survival
If a partner is buried in an avalanche, the survival rate drops rapidly after 15 minutes. After 30 minutes, survival rates are below 50 percent. The speed and effectiveness of your companion rescue determines whether your partner lives.
The three-step process:
Beacon search: every unburied group member switches their beacon to search mode immediately. Move to the last seen point and begin a systematic search pattern. Modern three-antenna digital beacons will guide you to within one to two metres of the burial. Practice this — timing your search under pressure is different from reading about it.
Probe: once your beacon indicates the burial location, switch to probe to confirm the exact position. Insert the probe at a slight angle downslope of the beacon signal. When you strike the body, mark the probe location and leave it in place — this is where you dig.
Shovel: use the V-conveyor method. Two or more rescuers work together — one digging at the probe, passing snow to the next person who conveys it to the side, creating an efficient extraction. Do not dig straight down — approach from the downslope side and create space to access the burial. Strategic shovelling extracts a buried person two to three times faster than random digging.
AST 1 includes practical field practice of all three stages. Take the course. Practice with your group before you go into the field. The skills need to be automatic — under the stress of a real burial, you do not have time to think through the process.
The Australian Avalanche Forecast
An avalanche forecast for the Kosciuszko region is published by the Snowy Mountains Backcountry Network during the Australian season. Check it before any trip into the NSW backcountry.
Victorian alpine terrain does not have a formalised avalanche forecast service. Riders in Victorian backcountry terrain must rely on their own snowpack assessment, weather observation and terrain reading — which is why AST training is relatively more important for Victorian riders than for those operating in regions with comprehensive daily forecasting.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology alpine forecasts provide weather information relevant to backcountry planning. Snowyhydro.com provides snowpack depth and conditions information for the Kosciuszko region.
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