A storm is ripping. The blowing snow has numbed your face. Visibility is low. You can’t hear your partners through your hood. You’re breaking trail. Your heart rate is up, and you know your team is tired, getting cold, and is ready to get home.

Checking the map is a good idea, but you choose not to because you’re pretty sure you’re on track. Plus, your hands are cold, and your gloves barely work with your phone.

There is pressure to keep moving. What are you most likely to do?

Reducing risk in the mountains isn’t just about increasing your knowledge; it’s about designing your systems for the most stressed version of yourself so that the right decision becomes easier — before the pressure sets in.

If you remove the barriers to doing the right thing, you remove a lot of the excuses that can lead to bad outcomes. The goal is to design your gear, routines, and habits so that doing the right thing becomes the easiest option available.

Here are 6 strategies for reducing the friction to making the right decision in the field:

So you’ve taken an avalanche course, but how many times since then have you continued to do a pre-trip process? Reviewing the forecast, deciding what terrain to close, looking at the plan with your partners, etc.

When you go through the process over dinner the night before, or with coffee in the morning, you’re evaluating conditions without the pressures of wind, cold, fatigue, or group momentum.

You can think clearly about what happened in the snowpack, what the forecast is calling for, and what other hazards might be present. You also ensure your group’s goals, equipment, abilities, and risk tolerance are aligned with one another and with the objective. You identify backup plans and a turnaround time. You agree on decision points.

The pre-trip process is taught on avalanche courses for a reason, because it’s actually proven to reduce your risk! When you pre-commit to terrain closures and decision points before field pressures set in, you dramatically reduce the impact of heuristic traps later. Things like familiarity, commitment to an objective, or social pressure tend to creep in when decisions are made on the fly.

Another form of friction is weight. If a piece of safety equipment is heavy or awkward, you start negotiating with yourself about whether it’s worth bringing.

Light helmets get worn more often because they get brought more often. Light ropes get packed more often. Lightweight avalanche safety systems (like SBX) get carried more consistently. How many times have you chosen a different pack over your airbag just because it’s heavy?

When something becomes part of your standard kit instead of a burden, the internal debate disappears. This is one reason lightweight safety systems like SBX matter. If something is easy to bring, people actually bring it. It turns out that safety equipment works much better at reducing your risk when it’s actually on you.

And similar friction shows up in our bodies, too.

Discomfort is one of the fastest ways to lose sight of real hazards. Cold, hunger, fatigue, boot fit, even group dynamics — all of it can blur our priorities and make comfort feel more important than the hazards that can actually kill us.

We’re always prioritizing how we reduce exposure to hazards based on the consequence and likelihood. In mid-winter, avalanches may be the more likely and consequential of the hazards we manage. In spring, the bigger concern may be falling off or into the mountain.

But distractions have a way of hijacking our attention. Group dynamics, fatigue, time pressure, and the desire to get home before dark can start to influence decisions, and before we know it, we’re unintentionally deprioritizing hazards that actually matter.

These things feel urgent, but they are almost always lower consequence than hazards like being involved in an avalanche, a crevasse fall, or falling off the mountain. I have my strength coach in my ear in these moments: “It just hurts — you’re not going to die.” He repeats that throughout tough workouts, and I bring that voice with me into the mountains when I’m cold, uncomfortable, or when our group has challenging dynamics. That simple line helps me keep the hazards that can actually kill me in focus and not get distracted by discomfort.

It’s easy to lose track of why we’re even out here. In the end, the whole point is to find joy with good people and come back home. Don’t let the desire to push into terrain that isn’t right for the day get in the way of that.

When friction starts building: cold, fatigue, pressure; I sometimes ask myself a simple question: How would I explain this decision to my partner’s mom? Or their spouse? Or their kids? If the answer is anything along the lines of “I was too lazy” or “because it was easier,” that’s a pretty good signal to step back and take another look.

It’s easy to make decisions when you have a clear head, but that’s just not the version of you who is actually making decisions out there. That’s why we set our systems up early — before the unreliable version of ourselves shows up. We make our tools accessible, choose thoughtfully designed gear that we’ll actually carry, do our pre-trip process before leaving home, and manage discomfort before it affects our judgement.

Reducing friction is a skill. The more you practice it, the more automatic good decisions become. Design your systems for the version of you that’s cold, tired, hungry, and under pressure — because that’s the version actually making the decisions.

Do whatever you have to do to make the right decision easier — and do the right thing, even when it’s inconvenient.