After four decades of backcountry skiing in the Canadian Rockies, plus the Yukon and Ellesmere Island, Tony Daffern knows a few things about travelling safely in avalanche terrain.

And his newly published Backcountry Avalanche Safety: Skiers, Climbers, Boarders, Snowshoers, a thoroughly updated edition of his original 1983 book, Avalanche Safety for Skiers & Climbers, shares a lot of that valuable knowledge.

Loaded with colour photos that well illustrate the beta in their captions, the book covers an impressive wealth of information crucial to anyone venturing into avalanche terrain, or seeking to avoid doing so. The first half features timeless information covering snow, avalanches and avalanche terrain, all of which has not altered much on the page or in the mountains since the original.

The second half of the book, which includes a gear chapter outlining the modern technology of Avalaungs, Avalanche Airbags and the SPOT Satellite Messenger System as it delves into how people are accessing backcountry slopes and what their objectives are once they get there, has been drastically re-written.

The result is a concise, well-organized book that shares piles of invaluable knowledge aimed at ski tourers, ice climbers and snowshoers who seek to limit their exposure to avalanche terrain, as well as skiers and boarders who deliberately seek out the steepest, gnarliest and most avalanche-prone terrain possible in their quest for memorable turns.

The book also features a new Tip Planning Chapter, which, in addition to basic leadership practices and emergency gear checklist, contains essential advice on interpreting the Public Avalanche Bulletins in conjunction with the Backcountry Avalanche Advisory, Avalanche Danger Scale and Avaluator tool, as well as the Avalanche Terrain Exposure Scale detailed in the previous terrain chapter.

Driving home the message of careful route selection, Daffern imparts advice to the backcountry user group which constituted the vast majority of western Canada’s avalanche deaths during the 2008/09 winter season – snowmobilers – writing, “Don’t even consider high marking when the danger level is considerable or higher.”

Overall, the key message of the book is that travelling in avalanche terrain means paying attention to that key factor – terrain.

When Daffern, along with Alf Skrastins, Murray Toft and Alan Derbyshire completed the first Southern Cariboos traverse in 1980 along the fringe of Wells Grey Provincial Park, covering 100 kilometres of massive, glaciated terrain far from any road, they relied heavily on careful terrain selection in changing conditions in an era with few avalanche transceivers or other gadgets.

“When you’re out for 12 days and you have a snowstorm, you have to figure out whether you should wait a day for the storm snow to settle [with a limited food supply], or whether the snow is getting a lot of sun in the afternoon or if you’ll sleep on a col so you can ski down the other side first thing in the morning before its becomes dangerous,” Daffern said.

It was on an earlier trip navigating deteriorating avalanche slopes above a deep V-shaped valley where a person could easily be buried under three metres of snow in the bottom of the creek bed, that Daffern decided to learn more.

“We picked our way out very carefully, Daffern said. “That trip promoted me to learn more about avalanches and snow conditions.”

Daffern published Avalanche Safety for Skiers & Climbers in 1983 because at that time there was little information publicly available.

“There was a little brochure by Ed LaChapelle, and there were guides’ manuals and U.S. Forest Service papers, but nobody could get their hands on those,” Daffern said. “I wanted to gather the information from all those obscure sources and make it available to the public.”

Today, the situation has almost reversed, as the Internet has made terabytes worth of information available on-line.

“I tried to make sense of all that information and organize it in a logical way,” Daffern said.

One of the biggest changes to this edition is the availability of excellent avalanche forecasting and snow science knowledge, he said. But in the end, good terrain sense is irreplaceable.

“When I did most of my ambitious touring, we survived because we developed the ability to manage terrain,” Daffern said. “We learned the importance of always taking notice of the terrain below us, and what was above us that could avalanche down on us. You can dig as many snow pits as you like, but if you don’t know how to manage the terrain all those snow pits aren’t going to do you much good.”

Throughout the volume, Daffern pushes this point and other essential considerations such as recognizing different snow conditions, deciphering a snow pit, reading wind direction and its affect on the snow surface.

Through gripping real life scenarios and first-person accounts of mishaps, he also drives home lesson number one – don’t become caught in an avalanche in the first place.

“While it is important to carry the appropriate equipment, particularly beacon, shovel and probe,” Daffern writes, “it is more important to make informed decisions to avoid being caught in an avalanche in the first place. How often do we hear in the media that the deceased, ‘...was experienced and had all the right equipment.’”

The same goes for today’s high tech gadgets, including the lightest sturdiest probes and shovels on the market and avalanche transceivers that can locate just about anything except your luggage at an airport.

“A lot of keeping yourself out of trouble is common sense,” Daffern said. “All of that equipment is OK, but the thing is not to get caught in the first place.”