The Alaska Avalanche School is offering two snowmachiner specific classes this year. The first is the 22nd and 23rd of this month.
Anyone else going to be there?
Anyone else going to be there?
Avalanche Training
- Thread starter The Fourth Wolf
- Start date
Well we finished up a bit early today at Turnagain because it's dumping big time.
The avy class put on by the Alaska Avalanche School was top-notch. The beacon course was educational. There is definitely a technique to reading a beacon and each model of beacon works a little differently.
The biggest thing I learned was evaluating the snow and the general rules for assessing the overal avy hazard.
Of course, there's the terrain, but that's kind of a given. Riding the mountains means being in or near slopes steep enough to slide but recognizing the various factors that elevate the overall hazard is the trick.
Some questions I will now think about:
What's the winter been like in terms of snowfall?
When was the last storm & how much snow fell?
What was the weather like between the last storm and the one before it.
What the weather forecast for today (assuming you're riding today)
We spent the morning in the trailer doing academics. It was whiteout all afternoon so we did not go up top. The original plan was to go up and evaluate the various hazards and snow conditions. We rode the powerlines down towards the lower meadows, climbed up to a lower bench with some untracked snow to dig test pits and talk about techniques for testing stability.
The instructors were great. Very knowlegeable and generous with their expertise.
Based on what I learned this weekend, the dump now accumulating up in Turny is resting on two pronounced weak layers.
The huge, early season dump is about 3 feet thick and icy hard and well bonded to the ground. This is the bed layer the avy slides on.
On top of that is surface hoar - a common weak layer
Then there's about 8 inches of bonded, light snow which also has a heavy hoar layer from last week.
On top of that is 2-3 inches of light snow from yesterday which will bond nicely to the dense, humid snow that's falling now. This new snow will bond with a high degree of cohesion--and make for a classic slab avalanche.
What all of this means is the avy hazard in Turnagain is going to be pretty severe for a day or two after this storm clears up.
Ride safe--wait at least 24 hours after a storm stops, avoid terrain traps and don't just wear a beacon, carry a probe and a shovel. Get some training to optimize that gear.
The avy class put on by the Alaska Avalanche School was top-notch. The beacon course was educational. There is definitely a technique to reading a beacon and each model of beacon works a little differently.
The biggest thing I learned was evaluating the snow and the general rules for assessing the overal avy hazard.
Of course, there's the terrain, but that's kind of a given. Riding the mountains means being in or near slopes steep enough to slide but recognizing the various factors that elevate the overall hazard is the trick.
Some questions I will now think about:
What's the winter been like in terms of snowfall?
When was the last storm & how much snow fell?
What was the weather like between the last storm and the one before it.
What the weather forecast for today (assuming you're riding today)
We spent the morning in the trailer doing academics. It was whiteout all afternoon so we did not go up top. The original plan was to go up and evaluate the various hazards and snow conditions. We rode the powerlines down towards the lower meadows, climbed up to a lower bench with some untracked snow to dig test pits and talk about techniques for testing stability.
The instructors were great. Very knowlegeable and generous with their expertise.
Based on what I learned this weekend, the dump now accumulating up in Turny is resting on two pronounced weak layers.
The huge, early season dump is about 3 feet thick and icy hard and well bonded to the ground. This is the bed layer the avy slides on.
On top of that is surface hoar - a common weak layer
Then there's about 8 inches of bonded, light snow which also has a heavy hoar layer from last week.
On top of that is 2-3 inches of light snow from yesterday which will bond nicely to the dense, humid snow that's falling now. This new snow will bond with a high degree of cohesion--and make for a classic slab avalanche.
What all of this means is the avy hazard in Turnagain is going to be pretty severe for a day or two after this storm clears up.
Ride safe--wait at least 24 hours after a storm stops, avoid terrain traps and don't just wear a beacon, carry a probe and a shovel. Get some training to optimize that gear.
