Adam Jewell - Search & Affiliate Marketing

On Day 4 of the 2008 PSIA National Academy, we started out with the morning session with Steve Smart. We had some great runs and worked on some handy exercises to try to focus on a particular aspect of skiing. As has been the case all week, the weather was variable. I dressed a little more warmly and was sweating my @ss off by the time the lunch break rolled around.

As usual, I went back to the hotel room at the Cliff lodge, had a bananna, watched the tube a little bit, took off the painful boots and got a chance to rest a little bit. The afternoon session was an intro to back country and avalanche preparation. I wasn’t sure what to expect and had had some basic avalanche training on a previos ski trip to Las Lenas Argentina with Gavin from SnowPerformance.com in 2004, I think it was.

The trip to Las Lenas required an avalanche tranceiver so I had an Ortovox M2 that I brought to Snowbird for this particular afternoon clinic. Prior to the lunch break, it really started to warm up and I ditched the long underwear at lunch so as not to melt.

We met back down at the Snowbird Tram area for the afternoon clinics and ________ and ________ were the clinic leaders for the back country and avalanche clinic. In just a few hours with 2 clinicians and about 20 people, there isn’t time to cover much more than the basics but it was a good refresher. We headed over to Mineral Basin (essentially the back side of Snowbird), traversed around to the right along the catwalk with a few of what may have been the ski patrol ski backpacks.

When going back country, especially anywhere with any real danger of avalanche, it is important to remain spaced out. If an avalanche starts flowing, the group will be a lot better off if only one person gets caught in it than a whole group. That was pointer number one and something easily forgotten that could make the difference between life and death. Simply being aware of the surroundings - what’s above you, what’s below, where you can ski out an avalanche if necessary is also extremely important.

Once we got to a nice out of the way area, we split up into 2 groups. I started in the group practicing the withe avalanche tranceivers. Didn’t actually get a chance to test my skills but have played with them before so it was good other people got a chance to learn how to use them. While avalanche tranceivers definitely work, it one person doesn’t switch their from transmit to reveive during t search, it can throw the whole things off. If you go wiht a group it is extremely important to designate one person to coordinate the search to make sure the tranceivers all have the right settings and to maximize the area that can be covered in the minimum amount of time.

When you get within a meter or less (maybe a little bit more if the person is buried deep) its time to break out the probe to see if you can find the person or an air pocket where they seem to be. Once you identify the spot, you should try to dig at an angle to the person and not straight down on them. Try not to crush any air pockets that may be around the person and get to them as quickly as possible. Buried in an avalanche a person could be dead in under 15 minutes so it is really important to move quickly!

The second part of the clinic was evaluating snow conditions. When trekking back country or skiing out of bounds, the makeup of the snowpack is critical to be aware of. What layers are you trekking across, are they stable, will they slide, will they shear off? You’ll never know for sure but with a snow card and a shovel you can examine the layers by cutting away some snow - go down a few feet - and then using a credit card to identify the consistency of the diferent layers in the snowpack. If you are serious about back country, then you’ll want to get a Digital Professional Snow Kit from Life-Link or some other manufacturer. This will give you the tools you need to evaluate the snowpack and the crystals when you dig a pit to see how safe the snowpack is around you.

Digging a pit and examining the snowpck was new to me so that was pretty interesting. I can’t remember the lst time we had an avalanche in Pennsylvania but next time we get conditions that might create a danger, I’ll be more prepared. PSIA really ought to sell the gear to do this stuff at the National Academy. When you signup you should have the option to order gear for the clinics you signup for. PSIA could make some cash and the manufacturers could get their gear in the hands of industry pros.

There was almost no skiing in the afternoon but I was still sweating like a pig out in the sun. After dinner and the presentation from the International ski pro, it was off to bed reltively early. The combination of lot of skiing, sunburn and the altitude had me pretty wiped out by the end fo the day again. Hard to belive we’re at the end of day 4 and only one more day to go!