AVALANCHE!!!!!!!

This weekend i was helping to teach an avalanche class. I love doing it because i love to see the students come away on Sunday with the knowledge to travel safely in the mountains.

The classes are through 10th Mountain Huts( http://www.huts.org/ ) with Aspen Alpine Guides doing the teaching ( http://www.aspenalpine.com/ ).

On Saturday is the first day we go out in the field. We spend that day looking at avalanche paths, digging pits, doing bonding test and route finding. About an hour out the weather turned bad. The clouds moved in and the wind picked up to speeds in the 40 to 50 mph range with the temps dropping into the low single digits. After about 4 hours in the field we all had to turn around to get back to the hut to thaw out.

One of the best exercises we do with the students is the final companion rescue exercise. We set up a mock avalanche and have the student teams find 2 buried people with beacons and one buried without a beacon. It's great fun and the students learn lots.

During one of the rescue exercises the instructor, who was acting the part of a victim, had her beacon still on transmit. No one in the rescue party told her to turn her beacon off so she stayed close to one of the guys doing beacon search all while screaming "where's my Barney". The student doing the search kept getting low distance numbers on his beacon until the instructor walked away from him. The student with a puzzled look on his face said" hey, hold it, my buried guys going away from me......ahhhhhh!?!???!!!!!".

My favorite set up is the simulated buried person with the glove and ski pole sticking out of the snow.

Also, on Saturday we got word of a big avalanche set off on Berthoud Pass near Winter Park. It ran big and knocked 2 cars off the road and 8 people were injured

All in all, what a great weekend......for us.