Winter Emergency Skills Training
avalanches are not the only things that can happen to a group travelling in the backcountry in winter. This course introduces a number of most common backcountry winter emergencies and strategies and techniques for dealing with them. If something happens and wrecks your day of skiing/riding, don’t have that be the first time you ever think about how to deal with a winter emergency. Learn how to respond to common winter travel emergencies, build skills to deal with problems in the field and train skills and techniques that could help get you and your friends out of a tricky situation.
Topics include
- Winter Travel Emergency Gear: What to carry, what it does and how to use it.
- Activating Emergency Response: How to get outside help if you need it, who will be coming and what to expect.
- Strategies for Self-Care in Winter Emergencies: How to keep yourself warm and dry enough to be able to help.
- Moving/Evacuating an Immobile Partner: What to do when a partner can’t move themselves.
- Tree Wells: Why they are a big deal and what to do about it.
- Winter Overnight Shelter building: What to do when help isn’t coming today, or you need to stay dry and warm.
- Fires in Winter: How to build them, how to get useable heat out of them.
- Common Equipment failures: What to carry for tools and spare parts and how to use it.
- Helicopters: What they can and can’t do, even though they run on jet fuel and magic.