Back Country Safety: Ideas for solo travel

I prefer touring with a partner, but also find myself soloing about 50% of the time.  In addition to taking the precautions previously mentioned, I find the most important safety element to be adjustment of expectations.  When I go solo I am expecting nothing more than a "safe walk in the woods,"  turns are just a bonus.  When I tour with an an experienced partner, my expectation becomes about the downhill.  You can carry a SPOT, leave detailed plans, avoid trees, dig pits, check-in with rangers, etc, but safe solo travel starts with adjusted expectations before leaving the house.

Snowolf, it appears this is exactly how your expectations started on your 12-16-10 White Pass tour, but then you altered your plans based on meeting others in the backcountry.  Your expectation changed based on solo travel morphing into group travel.  This seems like a reasonable decision as long as you are able to quickly and accurately assess the skills of your new found partners. 

Great discussion - thanks. It could be interesting to compare backcountry skiing to other outdoor sports. For example, lots of people go hiking by themselves and this is accepted by most as being reasonably safe. On the other hand, I know a guy who likes to scuba dive solo. For anyone who has taken a scuba class, it is almost gospel that you never go it alone, and adhere to the buddy system. This is much due to the fact that one equipment failure (your regulator or your tank) at depth will kill you if there isn't someone to assist with an auxilllary source of air.

It seems like backcountry skiing falls somewhere in between - more technical and with a higher potential for injury than hiking, but not in as adverse an environment as diving, or as completely reliant on equipment for survival.

I really enjoy both skiing alone and with partners. I think part of the allure to backcountry skiing (beyond the absolute fun of it) is a sense of accomplishment and self-reliance. This seems to be magnified when going it solo. I've definitely made some stupid mistakes when solo, but try to start with a large safety buffer so that they are blunders to learn from rather than serious situations.

I know I know, I promised to go away. Not sure if the lack of response to extricating oneself from a tree well is due to a lack of knowledge or not wanting to upset the applecart but for those reading this and not familiar with the situation here is a word of caution.

When a skier goes into a tree well head first he finds himself with very limited mobility. His arms are restricted by the walls of the well and his skis make any leg movement nearly impossible. To add to this frightening scenario the powdery and often sugary snow is dropping and covering his head. The more he struggles, the more snow comes down only making matters worse. For many this leads to suffocation and death. The best advice? Don’t fall into tree wells in the first place and if you are skiing alone in the trees you might want to consider an avalung.

Yes - as I noted above, I've seen someone who was completely unable to extricate himself from a tree well. Fortunately his face was not buried. His hands were even free, but his arms were cemented in and he couldn't do any more than wiggle his fingers, twist his wrists, and yell. And it was a little hard to hear him from 10 yards away. Little and medium evergreens seem to be the worst for catching the unaware with a wider gravity well than expected.

It has been enlightening reading all the posts here, as it's obvious that many of us ski solo anywhere from occasionally to often. And those of us that do recognize an increased sense of responsibility to those who care about us - whether to leave info at our car, carry a spot, or attempt to be more conservative in our trip choices.
Snowolf - my concern on ski cutting comes from personal experience, and as expressed by various researchers and authors of avalanche papers and books. Though our maritime climate's wetter, warmer snow less often forms into the harder slabs of the intermountain and Rockie's, we can nevertheless still experience harder slabs higher on exposed ridges (cooler temps & higher windspeeds). My experience has been that those harder, ridge top wind slabs can sometimes reach back further than we expect, sometimes even back over the crest - which makes doing a ridge top ski cut sometimes dicey. Admittedly, the decade I spent skiing daily in the Rockies and Alaska spoiled my sense of ease & freedom forever; there you can't take for granted any winter, backcountry slope, with the shallower snow pack (depth hoar), cold temps (faceting), dry/cold snow (hard slabs and depth hoar) high winds w/ lots of wind transport (hard slabs again), and, lots of midslope cross loading. I'm just more conscious of potential trigger zones and try to avoid them. I'm most relaxed and feel at ease in the spring-summer, when after the spring climax cycles, the snowpack settles down to become almost universally stable - excepting for loose wet slides with warming. But I still love winter cold smoke!

Regarding tree wells, I've plunged into one, and plunged upside down into the side of a conifer below me once. In addition to the ridicule of my watching ski buddies, and an entire chair lift in the case of flipping upside down into the trail-side conifer, the one thing I remember most vividly while hanging upside down with snow in my pants, parka, nose and ears, was the difficulty getting free from my bindings. Struggling to do a sit up in amongst the branches in order to release your bindings, or get your pole (assuming you still have it in your hands) pointed up to push a binding release point, is exhausting. And releasing only one doesn't necessarily make it easier to get the other released. And of course releasing the last ski, or getting the last foot from your board, frees you to possibly plunge further - making the climb out interesting. If I was a snowboarder, I'd be lobbying real hard to get some kind of releasable backcountry binding to the market - for avalanche safety as well as tree wells. I think I've heard of some adaptation whereby dynafit bindings are fitted to the splitboard plates (?); of course, then you'd need to use an AT boot, at least until someone comes along with snowboard boots with tech inserts (which would seem doable) The same goes for tele-skiers.
Keep up all the good comments and personal anecdotes, experiences! Thanks.

If I was a snowboarder, I'd be lobbying real hard to get some kind of releasable backcountry binding to the market - for avalanche safety as well as tree wells.  I think I've heard of some adaptation whereby dynafit bindings are fitted to the splitboard plates (?); of course, then you'd need to use an AT boot, at least until someone comes along with snowboard boots with tech inserts (which would seem doable) The same goes for tele-skiers. 

While not a tree well, 6 weeks ago I wound up head down in creek at the bottom of Bundy's.  In one respect I was very lucky that I twisted so hard that I ripped the binding off my split board interface.  I don't think I would have been able to extricate myself if I was locked in and my partner was quite a ways below me.  I think it would have taken him considerable time to get to me.  Having one foot free allowed me to get my leg back under me, by far the scariest fall I've ever taken.  Obviously soloing on a board near trees and creeks brings an additional set of safety concerns.  For that matter, splitting with a partner may not be enough when it comes to falling in wells and creeks.  In the end, I was very lucky to have come away with only a grade 1 MCL strain.