By Ken Lukawy, National Avalanche Program Coordinator (ken.lukawy@skipatrol.ca)
Ah, the fall – time to refresh your first aid skills. This is something we do automatically as CSP members.
For those that patrol at ski centres or those who recreate in areas with avalanche risk, you should also be refreshing your avalanche knowledge and skills.
How can we do that? The easiest way is to review Avalanche Canada’s (AvCan) online education materials.
First, go through the materials in the Online Avalanche Tutorial:
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Avy Savvy (English https://avysavvy.avalanche.ca/en-ca).
This tutorial covers most, if not all, the materials from an AST 1 course.
Need some detailed information on a few of the topics? That information may be found in one of AvCan’s webinars. Current season webinars, plus archives from the 2022-2023, 2021-2022 and 2020-2021 seminar series are available and all are free to view.
These webinars are available at https://avalanche.ca/education/recorded-webinars
Still looking for more? Check out AvCan’s videos. Some are the same as the webinars, but others cover a wide range of topics in detail. The Vimeo channel appears to only have English versions (https://vimeo.com/avalanchecanada).
If nothing else, check out “Rescue at Cherry Bowl” – the reason why we train and practice our skills!
In March of 2013, four friends from Whitehorse, Yukon, made the 1,200 km road trip south to Shames Mountain, B.C. With fresh snow and clearing skies, they embarked on a week-long adventure exploring the area’s backcountry. Four days in, on a bluebird day in Cherry Bowl, their trip came to an abrupt end.
A massive avalanche hit the group of four skiers. When the slide stopped, three of them were deeply buried. The one person left on the surface had his pack swallowed by the snow, leaving him with no rescue equipment other than his transceiver. The chances of his friends’ survival were almost zero, yet all of them lived.
Explore what is now known as the “Rescue at Cherry Bowl” – the true story of how one trained group used their skills to successfully rescue the three people deeply buried in the avalanche.
As you may have guessed, Avalanche Canada is the source for avalanche awareness and training information.
Any questions can be directed to Ken Lukawy (ken.lukawy@skipatrol.ca), the CSP’s national avalanche programs coordinator.