Avalanche Class

Hi Again, last weekend I spent 3 days in Hatcher's Pass, which is about 50 miles from here, completing a Level 1 Avalanche Class. It was a lot of fun and very informative. We spent one day on rescue techniques and practice scenarios, one day on 'snow science', how to spot dangerous layers and dig test pits and one day on real world travel in the backcountry.

There are all sorts of opportunities to play in the backcountry here, but you need to be avalanche smart so that you can do it safely. This applies to the snowmobile, hiking/snowshoeing, and especially skiing. For those that have visited our house, the mountains that are directly out our front window have some fantastic backcountry skiing just 20 minutes away, however there is an avalanche danger during certain snow conditions and that is why I took this course. Plus I hope to do some Heli skiing and maybe some out of bounds stuff at Alyeska (legally, not just ducking under the ropes!) and I definitely need to be smart about snow conditions and sharp on my rescue skills for that stuff! So now I ski, snowmobile and winter hike with my avalanche beacon, probe, shovel, and most importantly a partner all the time!!

In order to take the class we showed up at the Hatchers Pass Visitors center about 2230 on Thursday night. In the summer you can drive to Visitors Center, but in the winter you have to hike the final 1.2 miles, uphill of course. So there we are in the pitch black, 10PM at night with our skis on pulling sleds with all our gear going up to the visitor center. We were able to sleep in the visitors center on the floor in sleeping bags. We also had to bring all of our own food for 3 days. There were about 20 people in the class so it was fun meeting all of them. We spent about 4 hours each day in lectures and then about 6-8 hours outside in the field. Unfortunately it was 5F or less the entire weekend, so lots of cold toes in the group. A great experience overall, now I can't wait to get out skiing.

On the last day some of the groups got to do a little bit of skiing, but my group had several snowshoers (slow shoers!) so we were unable to access the really good terrain. All in all it was a great course and something that everyone who is into winter sports should look into.

The pics are of me after all day outside, a picture from above the Visitor center also showing some of the buildings leftover from the old gold mine, and a picture of some of my classmates digging a snowpit to analyze the snow. Thats it for today. See Ya, Storm