Avalanche 101

My brother called me up in December and said that there was going to be an avalanche school coming up in January and asked if I'd be interested in going with him. I said, "what the heck. There might be an avalanche in Nebraska sometime".

I met him at his place in Denver and we drove to Boulder, CO. The class was offered by CMS, Colorado Mountain School. Here's the link. http://www.totalclimbing.com/page.php.

Class started on Friday at 6:30pm and got over at 9:00pm. We then had to drive to Estes Park for the Saturday and Sunday portion of the class. When we got there, we found out that we were staying in a remodeled national park ranger station building. The picture to the right shows the living quarters that we stayed in. Not too bad.

Class started bright and early Saturday morning at 8:00am. The instructors covered the types of avalanches, their characteristics, how avalanches form and release, primary start-zone factors, identifying avalanche terrain, ways to spot and avoid common trigger points, trip planning, preparation, and navigation, travel techiques, group decision-making skills, avalanche rescue techniques, weather, terrain and snowpack considerations.

We went out on Saturday afternoon and did some training with the avalanche beacons.

On Sunday, we went to Rocky Mountain Nation Park and drove up to the parking lot. We snowed shoed up to the Emerald Lake area. Beautiful country and I suggest to everyone to take a trip during the winter to see this park.

We finished up the day with digging a snow pit to check the recent snow pack and to see how stable it was. Pretty interesting stuff. Learned a lot and had even more fun. Great time.