Out in the Field

After spending the past two nights in the classroom and learning about ALL of the different factors that cause an avalanche, it was nice to head outside and to the Grand Teton National Park for training sessions. I've heard great things about the park, so I was excited to be going there for the first time. The drive from Jackson to the park is about 25-minutes due north and consists of jaw dropping views of the Tetons. The steep, abrupt climb of the mountains from the valley floor and the noticeable vegetation difference between the valley floor and the mountains are spectacular.

Once we parked our cars, we clicked into our Alpine Touring (AT) setups that had skins attach to them. An AT setup is different than a normal pair of downhill skis because of the bindings. AT binding have two functions:
1) To perform like a cross country ski by pivoting at the toe-piece
2) To perform like a downhill ski by locking in place at the heel-piece

AT setups are very useful when you can't depend on chairlifts to get up a mountain and need to hike up one. By attaching skins, which prevent a ski from slipping when hiking, you can effortlessly climb up slopes that are as steep as 70°. The efficiency of this combination is pretty amazing.

Our first training session consisted of pairing up with another student and hiding an avalanche beacon on each other. If you're not in the know, a beacon has two settings: send and receive. When in the backcountry, your beacon should always be in the send mode, except during times of rescue, where it should be in the receive mode.

It was my first time using a beacon, so this lesson was extremely valuable for me. After my first search attempt, which took me all over an open field and eventually to the buried beacon, I got quicker and more precise with my beacon, which is a Mammut Pulse Barryvox. Even though it is a quick learning curve, it's important to practice, practice, practice because, as we all know, it's best to have a task be second nature during stressful times.

The next useful training session was conducting a probe search. A probe reminds me of a camping tent pole that has an elastic cord. They can be as short as 170 cm or as long as 320 cm. It's best to have a probe that's over 300 cm and be graduated, which allows accurate measurements of snow depths.

In this particular lesson, we stood in a line with a probe extended in hand over our "avalanche debris". I've seen many pictures of people completing a probe search over avalanche debris, so this experience was a bit eerie for me. We methodically searched (or at least tried to) for a buried backpack. After a few probe attempts, we quickly got out of line and order and started randomly probing for the backpack, which is exactly what you don't want to do during a real search. I guess it's good that we got this wreck out of our system now. Right?

The next and final lesson was the analysis of a snowpit. Our guide and main instructor, Ron Matous, has a worth of knowledge on this subject because of his 23 years of real-world guiding and avalanche control experience. We cut a pit that was about 6 feet by 12 feet, so we could complete the following stress tests: inclinometer test, layer analysis test, shovel shear test and compression test. To learn more about these tests, you can view my photos and read avalanche.org.

After five hours in the field, it was time to head home and let the day's lessons sink in.