May 27, 2022: The Observed Need for Spring Climber Education
[ Comments are welcome, as always. You do not need an account but all comments must be manually approved which may take up to a day. We also welcome guest posts - not for any SEO goal but in the interest of open constructive dialog and the expression of varying opinions. ]
By Jim Frankenfield, Avalanche-Center.org Director and Founder
Several recent situations have demonstrated the need for climbers as well as late-season skiers to have season specific education.
There are cases of people waiting for answers from somebody else, even on the mountain.
There are also cases of people making observations which would be more appropriate and significant in winter while overlooking spring factors. Some of these people appear to have taken a Level 1 course in winter where they learned to make these observations.
Level 1 courses, especially in the traditional format, have a crowded curriculum. They are based on winter conditions and the experience of most instructors is primarily or entirely in winter. Adding more instruction specific to spring is not really feasible due to these limitations.
Let's look at some recent examples. (These are not specific case studies and do not involve any kind of incident, fortunately. They are examples of people, mostly collectively rather than individually, not knowing what to look for or how to make seasonally appropriate decisions.)
By Jim Frankenfield, Avalanche-Center.org Director and Founder
Several recent situations have demonstrated the need for climbers as well as late-season skiers to have season specific education.
There are cases of people waiting for answers from somebody else, even on the mountain.
There are also cases of people making observations which would be more appropriate and significant in winter while overlooking spring factors. Some of these people appear to have taken a Level 1 course in winter where they learned to make these observations.
Level 1 courses, especially in the traditional format, have a crowded curriculum. They are based on winter conditions and the experience of most instructors is primarily or entirely in winter. Adding more instruction specific to spring is not really feasible due to these limitations.
Let's look at some recent examples. (These are not specific case studies and do not involve any kind of incident, fortunately. They are examples of people, mostly collectively rather than individually, not knowing what to look for or how to make seasonally appropriate decisions.)
May 17, 2021: AI Offers Avalanche Awareness for Rock Climbers?
In this post let’s take a look at a recent article entitled “Avalanche Awareness for Rock Climbers and Hikers", just published on May 8, 2021. There is no attribution as to who the author may be.
About the same time a post appeared on Facebook for an "AI Powered Copywriter" which does "all the boring repetitive work of writing" for you. So you can now post hundreds of blog entries a day, send even more marketing emails, and even script videos.
While we don't know who wrote this avalanche article it may be a sign of things to come as more of the "mundane" work of writing copy for Google and Facebook in order to sell ads or products becomes predominant. There is nothing original in this article and in fact it appears to be a collection of material that is commonly touted, mostly through winter. Much of it does not apply in spring at all. And as far as rock climbers go - well, the avalanche center database
does not have a single fatality of a rock climber from anywhere in the world in the collection of over 2000 files over a 25 year period.
As we move to a paradigm where computers write copy for other computers, for the primary purpose of selling advertising, will the internet be reaching the right demographics with the most useful actionable content? Or will it simply consist of bits and pieces scraped from different existing content and reorganized by another computer to the satisfaction of Google?
Let's consider the points made ...
About the same time a post appeared on Facebook for an "AI Powered Copywriter" which does "all the boring repetitive work of writing" for you. So you can now post hundreds of blog entries a day, send even more marketing emails, and even script videos.
While we don't know who wrote this avalanche article it may be a sign of things to come as more of the "mundane" work of writing copy for Google and Facebook in order to sell ads or products becomes predominant. There is nothing original in this article and in fact it appears to be a collection of material that is commonly touted, mostly through winter. Much of it does not apply in spring at all. And as far as rock climbers go - well, the avalanche center database
does not have a single fatality of a rock climber from anywhere in the world in the collection of over 2000 files over a 25 year period.As we move to a paradigm where computers write copy for other computers, for the primary purpose of selling advertising, will the internet be reaching the right demographics with the most useful actionable content? Or will it simply consist of bits and pieces scraped from different existing content and reorganized by another computer to the satisfaction of Google?
Let's consider the points made ...
Avalanche Institute Home