Your chance of surviving is very much greater if you can get rid of your ski, for the ski drag you under, and prevent all hope of fighting your way to the surface of the avalanche. Once you are overwhelmed you should adopt a swimming motion. Above all, try to keep your head uppermost. A vigorous swimming motion with the hands is said to be useful by people who have survived.
Dangerous slopes should always be crossed as high as possible. An avalanche is much more dangerous if it overwhelms you from above than if it starts from the immediate neighbourhood of your ski. Steep slopes below a cliff usually yield a fairly safe passage just below the rocks, for there is often a little gap between the edge of the snow and the rocks which affords a secure route. Take advantage of every belt or shelf of gentler ground that may run across a steep slope. Traces of old roads or even of footpaths are better than nothing.
Clearly a man on ski is much more likely to start an avalanche than a man on foot. I have often been surprised to see chamois-tracks down slopes 40-50 degrees steep. It is true chamois occasionally get killed by avalanches, but they certainly possess a great immunity. The reason is obvious. The chamois’ slender hoofs sink in very deeply. They penetrate right through the snow to any hard underlying crust that there may be beneath. Further, the chamois does not, like the ski-runner, cut the snow by a continuous line which divides the slope in two, and deprives the snow above the ski-tracks of much of its support. Chamois-tracks form a row of small holes, and therefore have a much less unsettling effect.
A man on foot has some of the advantages of the chamois. He is at least much safer than on ski. His feet get down to the old crust below unless the soft snow is very deep. On ski it is extremely easy to start a small superficial avalanche or snow-slide; and on ski it is very difficult to check such a small or big avalanche once it is started. The ski may sink just into the superficial layer and help to detach it.
On dangerous ground you should therefore remove the ski and proceed on foot. If possible, tackle such slopes by a direct ascent or descent in single file. Traversing is much more likely to cut the snow slope and start an avalanche.
Never rope on avalanche ground unless one member of the party can remain on safe ground, i.e. a cluster of rocks, and secure the man who is traversing a short stretch of dangerous snow. If two or three ski-runners are caught by an avalanche while roped together, their chance of escape is slight, as the rope tends to get caught, to drag them under the snow and to suffocate them.
Dangerous ground should, of course, be crossed by only one man at a time.
It has been suggested by an experienced mountaineer that each member of the party should drag behind him a long thin red cord, which would provide a clue to the whereabouts of a man who had been buried by an avalanche. The ski-ing mountaineer’s kit is already so overcharged that few people would be likely to add to it for this purpose.
For the descent of dangerous slopes, if the party do not proceed on foot, they should put on their sealskins, so as to run the slopes as steeply and directly as possible.
The ice-axe should always be driven in as far as possible, so as to find purchase in the underlying snow. Ski-sticks that are provided with removable disks are very useful, as they can be driven in much deeper than ordinary ski-sticks.