Staying Alive Off Piste

I was asked to review this book with a view to inclusion in the yearbook I believe but it arrived with me too late for inclusion so I thought it might be worth putting this up on the website so that people can get hold of it before the season begins if they wish.

Staying Alive Off Piste!

This little book is available as a print on demand £6.99 or Kindle £1.98 from http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-lias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=staying+alive+off+piste&x=0&y=0. In it Doug Gurr & Barry Roberts, of Wilderness Medical Training, have tried to provide a classification of the risks involved in the off piste environment and the measures that can be taken to manage those risks.
As they point out, around 300 skiers, boarders and climbers die in off piste accidents every year and an analysis of the figures produces 5 categories of risk, in descending order: avalanche; steep ground (falls); cold; getting lost; crevasses. The book deals with each of these risks and provides the information that can significantly reduce the danger involved with each of them. The tone is informal  and readable but it’s an instructional book and as such becomes technical in places, so it’s fortunate that the text is double-spaced, well-organised and divided into clear sections. The advice is sound and straightforward with a deliberate emphasis on keeping things simple to provide a bedrock of knowledge upon which to build the details of experience. Reading the book section by section with breaks to review should avoid information overload whilst end of section summaries and catch phrases like “speed is safety” and “light is right” reinforce key points.
Unfortunately better proof-reading should have been undertaken before publication and it does take a moment or two to decipher phrases like, “its its still much easier that pulling on the rope.” On page 153 the same paragraph is printed twice. It’s also a pity that there aren’t more diagrams and photos to clarify some of the technical descriptions of crevasse rescue technique: figure 22, the illustration of “Essential Kit,” misses out the ropeman that is specifically recommended in the text, substituting a tibloc that is not mentioned at all and will not take the ropeman’s place as an autobloc. The photos and illustrations are the weakest element of the book, being uniformly indistinct except for the striking cover photo. This is no luxury option but an opportunity missed as far as clarifying and extending the relevance of the text.
The final section on “Other Stuff” reads like a collection of afterthoughts that do not really do justice to any of the subjects covered, although, as you might expect, the first aid section is much better than the rest. The comments on nutrition and fluid intake seem to some extent to be undermining “the mantra of light is right.” In general even the slimmest skiers are carrying enough surplus fat to keep going for a couple of weeks on a calorie deficit in your average expeditionary situation and fluid intake can become a vicious cycle when carrying a lot of water results in excessive water loss through sweating.
A short handbook like this can’t cover everything but it does provide the basics of a survival kit for the newcomer to off piste. There are longer more detailed books about avalanches for example and the book refers to some of these for further reading but I have no doubt that if this book is widely read and referred to it will save lives.