AST Plus: Applying Your Avalanche Skills Training

We get a lot of really positive feedback about our Avalanche Skills Training courses. The testimonials on our web site I think attest to that. Common themes we see are things like “a ton of information”  and “an amazing amount of knowledge”.

Indeed we make a real effort on our courses to get in as much as we can in the time that we have, to really give our students good value and to send them away feeling that the course was a really worthwhile experience. And though I think that we do a good job of organizing all of that information in a way that it feels manageable and complete, there is no doubt that on these courses we are opening up an area of knowledge that is highly complex and that is really just the beginning of a long learning journey.

Given these complexities it is not a surprise that a lot of the feedback we get from students suggests that just one more day added on to these courses on which we apply all that new knowledge could be a really good thing. Enter the AST Plus.

As I have suggested above, the AST Plus idea was really generated by our students. The consensus amongst many has been that they would love to have a chance to apply the knowledge from their avalanche skills training in a day of back country touring, with an instructor present to help walk them through this first experience of using the knowledge.

So here is how it works: We set you up with a super experienced guide. As with all our avalanche skills trainings, this person is not just an avalanche forecaster or an avalanche educator. All our instructors well exceed the Canadian Avalanche Centre standard for instructors or indeed the standards that most AST providers meet. Our instructors are also people who have spent many years making many real decisions in a lot of avalanche terrain. Think of someone who has spent many winters guiding millions of vertical feet at heli skiing operations and you start to get the picture. But this person is not going to “guide” you down the slopes as they do when they are guiding heli skiing. Rather they are going to “guide” you through a day of applied avalanche risk management where you make the decisions with them acting as the facilitator. It starts with a solid trip planning session where the instructor introduces you to the most valuable resources and how to use them as you plan a day using these and the skills you have learned on the avalanche skills training. Then it’s off to the mountains to implement your plan for the day. Again the students are the leaders with the guide using “teachable moments” to maximize the learning you get from your experiences in the field. You’ll finish the day with a well structured debrief that, like everything else you have done this day, acts as a template for how you will debrief your own trips in future to maximize your learning from each day to accelerate you along the path to becoming a competent decision maker in avalanche terrain.

AST Plus is well suited to anyone who has done the AST1 course or has equivalent training or experience. It’s also suitable for people who have done the AST2 or have equivalent training or experience. In fact having people of varying experience levels or training on the same touring day together mimics exactly what happens on real tours with real people. They are never the same and those differences become an important part of the dynamics of the decision making process. We see this as making for a valuable learning environment because it is real.

We’ve got an AST Plus with a couple of spots open on 11 January at Mount Washington. We've also got two days of AST Plus running at Mount Cain 15 and 16 February. We’ll be posting more dates soon. If you have a particular date in mind to do this training with us drop us a line and we’ll make that one of the dates on offer. Here is the link to the page to sign up for AST Plus: http://www.islandalpineguides.com/trips/82

We’ve also got some spots open on AST1 and AST2 courses which are coming up soon and are either close to full or filling quickly:

21/22 December AST1 Mount Washington

20-23 December AST2 Mount Cain

28/29 December AST1 Mount Cain

4/5 January AST1 Mount Washington

11/12 and 18/19 AST2 Mount Washington

18/19 January AST1 Mount Washington

1-4 February AST2 Mount Cain

We’ve also got a lot of very cool ski and snowboard touring opportunities for you this winter including Mount Washington and Mount Cain Backcountry Tours, Intro to Touring Weekends and Helicopter Accessed Tours. Check out our web site for details on these and many more trips and if there are not dates up there yet that suit you, get in touch to suggest some dates. We’ll write more later about some of these great trips and courses.