Swiss cheese and hills...

Just read this article by Heather Morning on Walk Highlands, and she came up with (well, i assume she did i suppose) a 'Swiss cheese' model of mountain walking in winter, and I think that she actually has a nice analogy there...

So each layer of cheese with the big holes in it is a layer of challenge that you can face in a day out, and sometimes these holes line up over several slices and you can fall through - so they might be confidence in navigation skills, slipping over, hypothermia, ...whatever.

So the snow is Cairn deep!

If you are out and for some god forsaken unknown reason you are relying on a phone only, and the battery dies, then you fall through  the first layer. Then you are out with no nav if you can't revert to map and compass. Or your map blows away, or you break your compass, then another layer goes. Then, you take ages getting down and you start to get cold as the day wears on. Another layer. Now its getting dark, and you are potentially in a corniced area or have limited confidence in the dark with nav, another layer. Once you are out of layers, you are toast. I liked it. I just started thinking about what the layers can be, maybe something like: Navigation, daylight, hypo/hyperthermia, dehydration, injury, clothing/equipment... food for thought. Perhaps this could be a checklist for being out in the hills, if any one of these things is lacking then think about what you would do and see if just another item in your pack, or another basic decision could save the day. Maybe that extra pair of gloves, or another buff, doesn't seem so silly after all.

She makes the point that usually, in a hill incident where there is loss of life or serious injury that its usually a few things that build up to it, and I can kinda see that. Not on all cases, but I suspect a large proportion. Food for thought in any case.