Avalanche Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
60 free Avalanche trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This avalanche trivia quiz covers the science, safety and history of the mountains' most feared hazard. It starts with how avalanches form: weak layers and depth hoar, slab versus loose snow, powder clouds that top 300 km/h, wet snow slides, ice avalanches, wind slabs, the angle of repose and the 38-degree critical slope. Then it turns to survival and rescue: why loud noises do not trigger avalanches, the survival curve that falls from 92 percent to 30 percent in twenty minutes, transceivers at 457 kHz, probes, shovels, airbags, dogs, Gazex exploders and howitzers, and the European and North American danger scales. There are also questions on the notable disasters: the Wellington and Rogers Pass avalanches of March 1910, the tens of thousands of soldiers killed in the Alps in the First World War, the Winter of Terror of 1950-51, Blons, Galtür and Montroc, the Huascarán avalanche of 1970 that buried Yungay, and the Everest tragedies of 2014 and 2015. Some questions any backcountry skier will know; others will test avalanche professionals. Every answer has been checked against primary sources, chiefly the Wikipedia articles on avalanches, avalanche control and rescue and the individual disasters, and each explanation adds one further detail.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01After an avalanche comes to rest, the debris holding a buried person is often likened to which material?
Concrete
Concrete. The debris locks solid the instant it stops, so a buried person usually cannot move even a hand and has to be dug out by others.
Q 02What is the most common cause of natural avalanches?
Increased load from snowfall during storms
Increased load from snowfall during storms. A quick deluge of new snow overloads the layers beneath until one gives way, so the riskiest time is during a storm and just after it.
Q 03Which of these supposed causes of an avalanche is actually a myth?
A loud shout
A loud shout. Swiss researchers calculated that sound presses on the snow at least a hundred times too weakly to matter, so it sets off avalanches, as one veteran forecaster put it, only in the movies.
Q 04What do avalanche forecasters dig into a slope to read a winter's snowfall layer by layer?
A snow pit
A snow pit. Its wall shows the whole winter stacked up like the layers of a cake, and tests on it reveal which layer is likely to give way.
Q 05Avalanche researcher André Roch famously warned skiers that the avalanche doesn't know you are what?
An expert
An expert. Roch, a Swiss pioneer of avalanche science, spoke from experience: he was caught in three avalanches himself, and his son was swept away by one while skiing with him and survived.
Q 06Roughly how fast can the fastest powder snow avalanches travel?
300 km/h
300 km/h. Most begin as an ordinary sliding slab, and when the drop is long enough so much snow is whirled into the air that it becomes a racing powder cloud.
Q 07Which avalanches are usually slower than most, yet leave very dense, destructive debris?
Wet snow
Wet snow avalanches. Rain or strong spring sunshine soaks the snowpack until it loses its strength, so they tend to release on their own in warm weather late in the season.
Q 08Most avalanches start on slopes about as steep as what?
A black diamond run
A black diamond run. Slopes of roughly 30 to 45 degrees are gentle enough to hold deep snow yet steep enough for it to slide, and they are also the pitch backcountry skiers like best.
Q 09Why are big slab avalanches rare on mountain faces steeper than about 60 degrees?
New snow keeps sluffing off
New snow keeps sluffing off in small, frequent slides before a deep slab can build. Gentle slopes rarely release for the opposite reason: gravity cannot overcome the friction holding the snow in place.
Q 10What do avalanche forecasters call a gully or cliff that makes even a small slide far more dangerous?
A terrain trap
A terrain trap. A gully funnels the debris into a deep pile instead of letting it fan out, so a slide too small to matter on an open slope can bury someone completely.
Q 11Which three primary elements of avalanches did Doug Fesler and Jill Fredston identify?
Terrain, weather and snowpack
Terrain, weather and snowpack. In the triangle the pair drew for their 1984 handbook Snow Sense, terrain decides where a slide can run, weather builds and loads the snow, and the snowpack's layers decide whether it fails.
Q 12Where relative to a ridge does more snow accumulate, forming deep drifts and wind slabs?
In its lee
In its lee. Wind slows as it crosses the crest and drops the snow it is carrying, so the sheltered side where you would hide from a gale is the one being loaded.
Q 13What do backcountry skiers call a convex slope that steepens as it drops away?
A rollover
Q 21Since national records began in 1950, which US state has had the most avalanche deaths?
Colorado
Colorado. Its high, dry Rockies get a thin, cold snowpack that grows weak, sugary layers, so slopes there can still be triggered long after a storm has passed.
Q 22Cold is rarely what kills someone buried by an avalanche; what causes most of the deaths?
Suffocation
Suffocation. A Canadian review of 204 deaths put it at three in four and trauma at nearly all the rest; buried victims run short of air long before they could freeze.
Q 23Who or what triggers about nine in ten avalanche accidents?
The victims' own group
The victims' own group. The snowpack usually rests in balance until a person's weight collapses a weak layer beneath them, so most victims set off the very slide that buries them.
A rollover. Snow is stretched rather than squeezed where a slope bends over, which is why shallow, soft slabs tend to crack right at the roll.
Q 14What are the angular, poorly bonding snow crystals formed by a persistent strong temperature gradient called?
Depth hoar or facets
Depth hoar or facets. Skiers call it sugar snow because its grains refuse to stick together, and once it forms it can linger all season, letting a slope slide weeks after it was buried.
Q 15What is the overhanging lip of wind-packed snow that builds out from a ridge crest called?
A cornice
A cornice. Some grow larger than a bus, and when one snaps off, its impact can set off a slab avalanche on the slope beneath.
Q 16What is the term for wind depositing snow parallel to a slope, forming slabs that are hard to spot?
Cross-loading
Cross-loading. Wind blowing across a slope drops its snow into the gullies and hollows that run down it, so slabs can form in pockets far below the ridgeline.
Q 17What do avalanche forecasters call the sudden collapse of a buried snow layer under a person's weight?
A whumpf
A whumpf. The name copies the muffled thump of the layer giving way, and on a slope steep enough to slide the same collapse often releases a slab avalanche.
Q 18What are the three parts of an avalanche path?
Start zone, track and runout zone
Start zone, track and runout zone. Below the tree line the track often shows as a treeless stripe, because repeated slides strip the trees and stop them growing back.
Q 19What is the 'return period' of an avalanche path?
How often avalanches form there
How often avalanches form there. Like a flood's return period, it is used to judge risk: small slides may run every winter, while planners keep buildings out of reach of the rare big ones.
Q 20Which type of terrain is highly unlikely to produce avalanches?
Dense forests
Dense forests. Closely spaced trunks anchor the snowpack and break up its layers, whereas scattered trees and boulders do the opposite, growing weak spots in the snow around them.
Q 24For about how long after burial do avalanche victims keep a better than 90% chance of survival?
15 minutes
15 minutes. A Swiss study of 422 buried skiers found survival falling from 92% then to about 30% by 35 minutes, so a victim's best hope is the companions already on the slope.
Q 25What is considered the minimum equipment for companion rescue?
Beacon, shovel and probe
Beacon, shovel and probe. The beacon's signal leads searchers to the right patch of snow, the probe pinpoints the person beneath it, and the shovel does the slowest job of all: digging.
Q 26What does an avalanche transceiver do all day while its wearer is simply skiing?
Sends out a constant radio pulse
Sends out a constant radio pulse. Only after a burial do the others switch to search mode and home in on it, and because every brand shares one frequency, 457 kHz, any unit can find any other.
Q 27Skadi, the first effective avalanche transceiver, took its name from a ski-borne goddess of which mythology?
Norse
Norse. Skadi hunts on skis in the myths; the early device named after her simply made a tone in an earphone, and searchers walked toward wherever it grew loudest.
Q 28Why do ski patrols and highway crews fire explosives into loaded avalanche slopes?
To trigger slides while it's safe
To trigger slides while it's safe. Charges are thrown by hand, dropped from helicopters or fired from howitzers, so the snow comes down in small planned releases with nobody underneath.
Q 29What do ski patrols call tramping up and down a steep slope on foot to break up weak snow layers?
Boot-packing
Boot-packing. It is the simplest avalanche control there is: crews walk a slope again and again as the snow builds, so weak layers are broken up before deeper snow can bury them.
Q 30Landscaped barriers that stop or deflect avalanches with their weight are called what?
Avalanche dams
Avalanche dams. Snow nets hold the snow in place high on the slope so that no slide begins, whereas a dam waits at the bottom to stop, split or steer one that is already moving.