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The course is three full days usually friday thru sunday and that presents a problem for us as fridays are often wild days in the market and I need access to commodity quotes and cell service to my broker and advisories and enough focus to make good decisions, none of which could happen in class. Stomp weekend provided the perfect opportunity to take in the class as monday was President's Day and hence no markets. The downside was missing all the group stomps but at least I could go to the GTG and Lynda would have hiking partners while I was tied up. I had hopes of going up early and helping build the igloo camp and or getting a few turns on Otis but we have been gone so much on biz I needed to get some work done.
The Class:
I have to admit I was a little intimidated as I was one of the oldest, many were college kids and probably of the highest risk group think car insurance rates. The common thread was we were all there to learn and after seeing the "old guy" could pretty much Hang with the youth everyone got along quite well.
Class started Saturday and we spent most of the day in the classroom learning about all the factors that cause and trigger avalances driven home with graphic films of skiers caught in fatal avalances and a failed rescue unearthing a blue deceased victim, serious stuff. Later in the afternoon we had a short field session at Lake Estes, mostly to get familiar with some of the rescue equipment and techniques in a warmer setting close to the CMS office. We had 21 in our group and rotated to 4 stations staffed by our 4 instructors.
Sunday we spent the morning in class again then headed up to Hidden Valley in the afternoon. Once again using the station approach we studied terain and weather affected aspects, observed snow layers and snow science in a snow pit, discussed group dynamics and travel planning and ultimately a very humbling suprise avalance rescue exercise in which our group failed miserably, our victim was under the snow over 30 minutes and his/her chance of survival at that point was nil. Afterwards we headed back to CMS offices to debrief , talking about mistakes made in our rescue and what we had learned in the field. The day ended with a sobering film documenting a ski tour resulting in one fatality and one severely injured party that lost his leg after a suffering compound fracture and a weather delayed rescue.
Monday started with a brief classroom session where we did our trip planning including reviewing online CAIC avalance forecasts, Noaa.gov point forecasts, possible destinations, reviewing maps to study possible routes, what we would be looking for and emergency and exit strategies. We then carpooled to Bear lake and our snowshoe group toured mostly north of Nymph, Dream, Emerald lakes then got a look at the Tyndal cirque and coulairs on the north side of the cirque namely the Dragons tail area. Some of the other groups on skis got some runs on the Tyndal Glacier and Dream lake chutes. I chose a snowshoe group so I could concentrate on learning and not worry about getting into ski terrain above my abilities.
One of the ski groups watched another group of skiers not in our group get themselves in a bit of a jam and trigger an avalance but noone was caught in the resulting slide. On the way down we witnessed the after effects of a human triggered slide on the Dream Lake summer trail. CMS guides routinely trigger this slope in an attempt to keep this route safer. The slope above the trail was maxing out my slope meter in the 45 degree angle plus category, unanchored and heavily wind loaded. While burial on this particular slide on monday was unlikely it would have certainly caused serious injury. All the while people were hiking up nose to tail oblivious to the obvious progagation above and debree field below. It just proves you don't have to be an extreme skier or radical climber to get caught in an avalance. Even on relatively flat train remote triggered avalances from above can engulf you. We repeated our victim recovery exercise and located and recovered our victim in a mere 6 minutes, a drastic turnaround from the day before. Lesson learned but one must realized it was only a drill not your best bud buried. The day ended with a debriefing in the classroom and a demostration of the new BCA float pack that when deployed has proven very effective in keeping those caught in slides from being buried.
In summary I felt this was an extremely valuble class. It has been said that taking a level one class actually increases your chances of being in an avalance, which can be somewhat true but is more of a function that those who have taken the class spend more time in the backcountry etc. While I am in no way any kind of expert I feel my knowledge and awareness was greatly increased. I cannot even attempt to cover all the info covered in the class but would like people to be aware of a couple of stats. One if you are caught in an avalance you have approximately 2 seconds to get to the edge of the propagation (break) after that you are basically along for the ride. Overall survival rate for buried victims is 52%. 25% will die from the trauma incurred in the slide. Carrying rescue gear (beacon, shovel, probe) has resulted in overall mortality rates dropping from 76% to 66%. Those numbers vary slightly as they are from different studies but the take home message is there is not much one can do once caught in a slide and your chances of survival are not good even with trained people and appropriate safety gear. The obvious message is Not to get caught in an avalance. Avalance science is very complicated and not exact but education and observation are key. You can reduce your risk of being caught in a slide dramatically. I purposefully omitted most of the science and techniques learned in the class, I'll leave that to the pros. I would highly recommend an avalance awareness class at a minimum to start. Many would find this AIARE Level One class beneficial as well as a second step.
For more info
http://www.totalclim...9&category_id=9
There are other resources for avalance education although I highly reccomend CMS, also anyone having any related questions to the course feel free to pm me.
Edited by JDgreen, 25 February 2011 - 10:51 AM.
