Be Avi Aware

This weekend FAR holds an Avi Awareness Weekend. If you ever have half inkling to ski out of bounds, this is a good weekend to pay a attention to what’s offered free up at FAR. Pick up the handouts. Talk to folks in the know and become avalanche aware.

I grew up driving past avalanche snow sheds stretching protectively railroad tracks and the highway on the way to the mountains. From a very young age, I was aware of avalanches. That said, my first true realization of the power of an avalanche came in a classroom during my geology field camp. Prof. Bradley had been a member of the 10th Mountain Division during WWII and avalanches were his field. He spent an afternoon discussing the mechanics, the power and then showed us a short movie of an avalanche running through an open glade of full growth pine trees. Perhaps three or four feet in diameter, the trees snapped off from the windblast fifty feet or more before the snow cloud reached them. Tossed in the air like pick up sticks, the power of the moving snow impressed everyone. In the silence that followed the short clip, Bradley laughed and said something along the lines of, “You don’t want to get caught in one of those.�

Right. We all nodded. Even as college students, we recognized wise advice.

An avalanche doesn’t need to be big to kill. Several years ago, we pulled a cross-country skier out of an avalanche, really more of a slough, that was eight feet by fifteen and a couple feet deep. He’d traversed down to an open section of creek to get a drink of water. The steep side of the creek sloughed burying him. He didn’t arrive home that night. His wife called the county search and rescue. When we found him, he’d been buried several hours and was dead. An avalanche the size of a big bathroom. Not much. Dead.

Take advantage of FAR bringing in these people to talk about avalanches, participate in a transceiver demo, learning about snow profiles and play/work a little with the avi dogs. Watch. Observe. Learn.

If you ski or board out of bounds without at least basic avalanche awareness, you are playing Russian Roulette with 5 of the cylinders loaded.

Go up to FAR this weekend and start to learn. If you already have an awareness, go up and refresh your knowledge. The more you know when you are out of bounds, the safer you and your companions will be.