My social media feed has started filling up with pictures of new snow on the mountain tops. There is still no sign of snow in Tromsø, but it is evident that autumn is here, and winter is approaching.

We have been a bit silent here at White Heat during summer, but we’ve not been idle.
Our study of hypothetical terrain choices among Norwegian backcountry skiers has recently been published in Journal of Environmental psychology. The journal is unfortunately not open-access, but you can read and download the accepted manuscript and the online appendix here:
Who’s at risk in the backcountry – accepted manuscript ,
Appendix – accepted manuscript
During the International Snow Science Workshop (ISSW) 2018 in Innsbruck, we are involved in seven presentations:
- How risky is it? Perception of risk among Norwegian backcountry skiers
- Are they experts? Self-assessed skills among backcountry skiers in Norway and North America
- Keeping up with Jeremy Jones: positional preferences and risky terrain choices
- Are you sharp while ascending?
- Do trends in forecasted avlanche danger affect our perception of the current avalanche hazard?
- Efficacy of avalanche warnings
- How do we really use terrain in the backcountry? A comparison btween stated terrain preferences and observed backcountry travel behavior
We will upload links to the extended abstracts of the studies here, as soon as they are publicly available.
We are very grateful to all participants. Please don’t hesitate to give us feedback, or ask if you have any questions on the content!