When travelling in avalanche terrain, avalanche risk is managed by choosing terrain the limits exposure to the existing hazard to an acceptable level while pursuing your activity. While mountain guides have a tremendous amount of practical expertise managing avalanche hazard, there has been very limited academic research on this important topic so far.
Our objective in this research area is to capture and quantitatively describe the risk management expertise of mountain guides to develop tools that make this expertise more easily accessible to avalanche professionals and backcountry recreationists.