Monday, January 10, 2011

Amazing Weekend in Mt Baker Back Country

All the pics here

Well my neighbor Ross and I have been taking an AIARE Level 1 Avalanche Training Course for the last few months and this weekend was the final round of training.  Up until now everything has been in the classroom but this weekend we headed up to Mt Baker to see the terrain first hand.

Saturday we stayed pretty close in to the parking lot and did work searching for beacons of "buried victims" to help us learn how to use our avalanche beacons and feel confident that we could find and dig someone out if we had to.  I hope I never have to use those skills but it sure is nice to have them.  So Saturday was spent digging pits to observe snow layers and playing hid and go seek with buried beacons.  It was pretty chilly since we were not moving too much but a great day to be outside.  

Saturday after spending the day in the field we went back to the cabin and met as a group to plan our travel plan for the next day.  We chose to head up to the artist point area which I have been to before and is the place I tried to take Natalie a few weeks ago.

Working our way up
Sunday we woke up at 6:00am to clear skies and cold temps.  The whole day ended up being blue skies and cold.  Perfect!!  We left the parking lot at 9:00am and returned at 4:00pm.  The day flew buy.  We moved around a bunch, made a lot of observations about the snow conditions and even got in a few amazing powder turns.

The pictures say it all I think.  Beautiful weekend and I can't wait to get out again.  Hopefully the weekend will be nice so a group of us can get out into the snow again.

No comments: