Reckless youth hard to reach on avalanche safety

They're young, strong and adventurous. They're also often reckless, ill-informed and under the illusion that they're invincible.
 
Put these qualities together, and you have what's known as the "out-of-bounders," young males awkwardly straddling the line between adolescence and adulthood. Unfortunately, when it comes to what's safe and what's clearly foolhardy, they're all too willing to cross the line.
 
And their numbers are growing.

Add to this a winter season where new snow sits atop a layer of firm crust, the upper layers hiding a weak layer of snow below -- a recipe for prime avalanche conditions -- and you have what could shape up to be one of Western Canada's deadliest avalanche periods on record.
 
Each year, an average of 14 people across the country die after being swept up in an avalanche. We're not even halfway through January, and already the number is at 10, after a Quebec man was killed Monday in a backcountry avalanche near Lake Louise.
 
In a large number of the cases, the victims have been young males between the ages of 18 and 25. Also in several cases, the deaths were easily preventable: many were in areas that were high-risk and off-limits, some even going past danger signs and other obstacles to get to the pristine powder that would take their young lives.
 
Such news comes as little surprise to Greg Fouts, a professor emeritus at the University of Calgary who's studied adolescent psychology for the better part of three decades.
 
Fouts is a lot more empathetic toward these foolish young adventurers than most.
 
"There are a lot of biological factors at work," he says. "Young males have higher levels of testosterone and MAO enzymes," he says, both of which have been linked to aggression and higher risk-taking behaviour.
 
These biological imperatives work together with societal factors that encourage and reward risk-taking, he says, more so today than ever before.
 
"There has been an explosion in media directed at teen and young adult males, glorifying extreme sports and other very risky behaviours," says Fouts. "Then we blame them when they get hurt or killed -- society is giving them conflicting messages."
 
Because of all these factors, says Fouts, ramping up warning signs on ski hills and other backcountry areas are often interpreted "as a dare" to those determined to test the limits.
 
"It would be like waving a red flag before a bull."  more.....