Yesterday Dan & Paul joined me for a 1 day avalanche awareness course and intro to back-country skiing. While not an official offering from our course programs we are always happy to customize a day for someone. The crux here though is realizing there is only so much info and practical application you can squeeze into an 8 hour day. However we did cover quite a lot of ground, metaphorically speaking, when it came to basic avalanche awareness. The 2 hour skin up to Hermit Lake was filled with chats about snow climates, basic snowpack metamorphism, and types & characteristics of avalanches. When we reached the bowl we poked around in the snow under the Sluice and found some of the layers I had posted this video about the day before:
After finishing our observations we got a nice run back to the floor of the ravine before hiking down to Hermit Lake and skiing the Sherburne Ski trail back to Pinkham.
We finished the day with a 1 hour companion rescue introduction at Pinkham, and Dan & Paul left with quite the appetite for more information. As Dan commented “Today has really shown me how much I don’t know”. That’s good to hear, and I expect to see both of them back for a formal AIARE 1 Course in the future!
To see what courses still have spots available please go here:
Northeast Alpine Start 