Level One Avalanche Course
Posted by peabizzle on Wednesday Jan 25, 2012 Under UncategorizedOn January 19th, 20th, and 21st The Choice in partnership with Treehouse Outdoor Education put on a Level One Avalanche Course. After two night classes learning about the transitional process of snow, and snowpack, we got up bright and early to do a field day at the Salmo Creston Pass. We all met at Hot Shots at 7:30 in the morning. It was dumping outside, and warm. According to our last two night of getting our Avi Smarts, this meant that avi conditions were in the high to extreme danger ratings. After a careful risk assessment (Dave Quinn telling us what we are doing), we decided that the Kootenay Pass was probably a bad idea, and that we should play it safe, and hit up out of bounds at the Kimberley Ski Hill.
All in all we had 19 people doing the course. Seven of which were on Splitboards which is pretty rad.
We hiked up around Moe’s Canyon, assessing snow conditions, and terrain traps as we went
The best part about this shot is that you can see in the distance 7 skiers breaking our trail…it didn’t last long though.
Andrew House learned the joys of skiing down hill on a spitboard.
As the day went on, we started to see a good slab form with all of the new snow, and we got a lot of whoomping when we were stomping around. Good signs that conditions were getting dangerous.
We spent a good hour burying our beacons, and then finding them again.
After we proved that we can find a buried beacon, we made our way to the top of the ski hill, and did some mock rescue scenarios. The split board team killed it. Finding, and digging out the buried ‘victims’ in no time.
Big thanks to Dave Quinn with Treehouse Outdoor Ed. for helping us out with this. The course was a huge success, and we will definitely be doing it again next year.
