Kootenay Avalanche Courses

Prepare for Adventure

Winter 2020-21 in review

by

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.

2-metre spacing during our lunch break of the end of November AST 1 course.
We ran our annual pro bono AST 1 course for students of the Seven Summits Centre for Learning. Thanks to Big Red Cats for providing a snowcat lift to the top of Mt. Neptune. It was a strong group of rippers.

Early December surface hoar leads to Holiday season cycle. It seems like there is often a weak layer that gets established in early December. This year was no exception. A cold clear period in early December grew surface hoar.

Extremely large surface hoar grown during the early December clear period.
The picture above was a size 3 avalanche at Whistler. A pro skier was buried 2m deep, but had skilled partners that were able to dig him out quickly.
In January, a natural size 3 avalanche failed on the early December surface hoar/facet combo on Record Ridge, outside Rossland. The crown was visible over 6km away from town.

Mid-January surface hoar leads to early February cycle. Another surface hoar layer led to an avalanche cycle in early February.

This picture was taken in late January, when the surface hoar was only 20cm deep. It was good conditions for ski cutting, as evidenced by the two size 1.5 avalanches that were triggered from the top of the picture. Ski cutting is part of the updated AST 2 curriculum that will be taught starting next winter.
Our AST 1 class was able to view the debris from this size 2 avalanche that slid on January surface hoar
This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Enterprise-Ridge-avi-feb-3-2021-rotated.jpeg
This size 3 avalanche was remotely triggered by a Kokanee group that were de-skinning on the ridge. The fracture propagated over a km away! They went back to the cabin with their tails between their legs.

Tour to the border: I was supposed to meet up with a former AST 2 student who lives on the US side of the border, but his snowmobile broke down. Instead, I did the tour a few days later with my buddy Jim.

Taking advantage of snowmobile tracks to cover some km’s quickly
Climbing toward the alpine. Note the border swath on the left.
Taking off skins on the border to begin the four north-facing descents to return home.
The first descent. It was a 13-hour day and dark by the time we got back to the car.

The Purcells! I joined a couple friends on a week-long trip to a rustic hut in the Purcells in late March.

Ascending the glacier
Windswept ridges made for challenging conditions on the ascent
Weaving through the icefall on the descent
A short window of visibility for the summit push

10,000 feet! I have come close to surpassing 10,000 feet (3,000 metre) of climbing in a day. Last spring, it happened on a beautiful bluebird day with my buddy Steve Omischl.

1st drop, what I call Joker Senior.
2nd drop under perfect conditions: sun, snow, stability.
3rd long glacier drop. A few shorter runs in the beautiful light of early evening put us over the top.

3% to climate

Kootenay Avalanche Courses donates 3% of your course fees to organizations dedicated to combating the effects of climate change, including Protect our Winters and the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation of Canada. Whitebark’s are a keystone species in the mountain environment where we recreate and can be identified as the only tree that splays open at the top versus the pointy nature of the other conifers.

Comments