Kootenay Avalanche Courses

Prepare for Adventure

Prepare for Adventure

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Whether you are getting ready for your first winter of backcountry travel or you’ve been at it for many years, Avalanche Skills Training (AST) Courses are the perfect opportunity to learn about (or brush up on) safe backcountry travel techniques, route finding, slope assessment and companion rescue. Join us for an AST program that fits your learning objectives.

About Keith Robine

Keith has been teaching avalanche education for 30+ years. Keith is the co-author of the Avalanche Skills Training Handbook, the textbook for all AST courses. He also wrote the update to the AST2 Instructor Manual. Keith is a Professional Member of the Canadian Avalanche Association and a Guide with the Canadian Ski Guiding Association. Keith has also published articles on innovative ways to include Human Behaviours … FIND OUT MORE

3% of your course fee goes to climate change initiatives

  • Protect Our Winters

KEITH on the Avalanche Hour Podcast

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Here is a recording of Keith being interviewed for the Avalanche Hour Podcast. He talked about the new AST 2 curriculum, focusing on graduated risk while managing avalanche terrain. You can also stream the podcast on your favourite platform. Here is the LINK .

Winter 2020-21 in review

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AST Courses run smoothly despite COVID. Across Canada, there were a record number of AST students, over 13,000 in total. KAC ran Zoom for all classroom lessons and field sessions were held with social distancing. Normally, close to half our students come from the US, but the Canadians came through to fill the courses. Early […]

Bugaboos 2020

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The Bugaboos are an amazing playground, especially for alpine climbers. This summer offered a chance to be up there without the usual complement of international climbers, just us Canadians! We also received a fresh snowfall of about 10cm! Was that the first snowfall of the upcoming year or the last snowfall of the previous year? […]

Valkyr AST2+ 2020

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We ran two 8-day AST2+ programs during the winter of 2019-20. Here are some of the highlights (photo credits: Mark Sena, Spencer Skerget, Angelique Rosenthal). We started each course a day early at Shon’s Hostel in Nakusp. We got to know each other while reviewing the program for the week. We also feasted on Chef […]