So my big plans for the year included:
1.Skiing a lot
2.Take an Avy Class
3.Hook up with some of those funny maggot people I see posting on the intraweb.
4.SHRED THE GNAR
5.ride it switch to the road.
well that plan was going along all good and fine with number 1 checked and number two on the schedule for late December. Well going well untill I decided to Thread the needle in deep pow in the trees. Crash boom bang- broken wrist, plans on hold.
For good measure here is me repping the no poles steeze
So 2 months after my accidente con el arbor I had recently gotten out of the hard cast into a brace and could finally ski with poles again. So despite the lack of recent snow and with high hopes I decided to sign up for the mountain madness Avy I course. Damn all this "free" skiing in the backcountry is spensive as hell: Skins - 190 (w/tax cutting), Trekkers - 100, Beacon - Expensive as hell, probe - 40 ~ bucks, shovel ~ 40, course - 220. Luckily I was able to borrow a probe and shovel from spindrift (THANKS MAN) and had my dad buy my beacon.
How did I get my dad to pay for the most expensive part of the setup you might ask? Well it goes some thing like this:1. My dad walks in to marmot in bellvue during his lunch break to ask some questions about this backcountry skiing stuff. 2. Salesman uses the line "when your son is burried under the snow unable to breathe Im sure you'll be thinking of all the money you didnt spend. 3. My dad walks out of the store with a new Mammut beacon and an anarchist pack. Not bad, big thumbs up to which ever salesman had the balls to say that to a customer.
So on to the course which itself was a 3 day affair with a 4 hour lecture friday night in seattle then two full field days at stevens pass. The lecture was very informative and the guides(instructors) were very knowladgeable, I was pleased that I already knew a lot of what was covered in the powerpoints from my time hanging out in the slide zone. I unfortunately do not have any pics of the lecture but it was very good.
So with the lecture ending at 10:00 in ballard, driving home, then having to get all my stuff ready I made it to bed around 1:20. One of the reasons it took me so long to get ready was I couldnt decide what to take.
I had heard that the stud finder would work but I decided on the beacon just to be safe.
Field Day 1:
Do you know how little sleep I got to get here at this time? Where's my goddamn coffee
After downing a tall quad breve I was feeling a little better and the group met over by the brooks chair to get ready to skin up the cat track into the grace lakes area.
My squads all wrekkered up and ready to go
"I'm sorry, I know that as your guide I am supposed to be encouraging and all but your skins suck"
I work with this guy, he is way to happy for this time of the mornign
One of the Instructors
We did a beacon check to make sure nobody had smuggled in a studfinder. Ski patrol swung by and messed up the check with thier beacons while thier dogs confirmed that we were missing our avalanche bacon
After skinning for about 20 mins we stopped and had a talk about the snow pack. You can tell this guy is core, he cut the tails off his seths.
Going down hill with skins on and with trekkers is pretty much the scariest thing ive ever done on skis.
Beacon goes in the bag, bag goes undersnow, backcountry newbs go hunting
I partnered up with this guy. He is an ex guide, full time pnw outdoors guy. he was really good with his beacon but the shear technology difference allowed me to find mine much quicker than he did. He was a better digger/prober though....
I think he said he has had his beacon for 15 years or something
Probing drills,
Next we dug a big hole in the ground.
We learned how to cut a collum and test for stability
whack!
***Huston we have a failure at CTH21, do you copy, over***
my first look at a weak layer, pretty clean shear
"hmmm...I smell surface hoar"
Just saying the word "rutschblock" is super fun, we did not get it to slide btw and we leared that cutting with a cord is easier than cutting with a saw attatched to the end of a probe.
We then skied back. First on breakable crust then on rock hard tread marks. After returning to the base area we had another lecture and slide show.
DAY 2
This time I got five hours of sleep instead of 4.
ITS SNOWING
Getting ready at yodelin
Christin(sp?) skinning
At the top finally, my legs arent use to this skinning stuff yet.
At the top we ate talked and all the students dug a pit and did more tests on them, stability was good. We then skied this powder field.
After we skied down to a flat medow where the old chair used to be we did some multiple burial searches and then one avalanche scenario where we had to rescue buried packs and clothing.
We then skied back to the parking lot in some of the grabiest snow ever. We talked and then parted ways. I took these shots on the way home, I thought they were pretty cool.
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***CAUTION BIG PICS, USE SCALEABLE BROWSER***
Summary: I had a great time and I learned tons. This was one of the best experiences of my life. I learned so much about snow saftey and the backcountry it is increadable but I know that this is a continuing education thing so I hope to be able to meet up with some WA mags for some BC sometime soon! HUGE THANKS to the guides and to spindrift for letting me borrow your stuff. I am buying the exact same shovel and probe, they worked great.
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