The two trainers on the Avalanche Awareness course at Glenmore Lodge knew their stuff.   Two personable, knowledgeable and likeable men with the experience of many years in the mountains.  Two of them, twelve of us and a huge amount of information.  Even then we all knew that we’d just touched the tip of the iceburg.

We learned about the importance of pre-planning, using our awareness of the triangle of weather, terrain and snowpack, with the human being at the centre of it.

We looked at weather forecasts, at wind speed and direction, at temperatures, at freezing heights, at precipitation.  We looked at avalanche forecasts and compared them with our new understandings of the weather.

We learned about terrain, about slope angle, break of slope, convexivity.  We looked at how wind will blow and deposit snow and where likely danger areas might be as a result.  We learned to plan our route.

We looked at the snow itself, and dug down to look at the layers.  The layers that we could feel with our probes.  We learned how to assess those layers and to recognise instability.  We learned that at the bottom of the snowpack it is nearly always 0 degrees and that the difference between that and the air temperature at the surface dictates the temperature gradient.  We learned about faceted snow – the blocky unstable crystals that form in the snowpack when there is a large temperature difference from top to bottom.  Particularly when it is very cold.  Warmer temperatures are more helpful and can lead to a pretty stable “transformed” snowpack.

We practised searching with our transceivers, pinpointing the “victim” and probing, and then digging.  We learned that we needed to practice this A LOT.  And to get our shovel and probe out of the rucsac and assembled whilst holding our breath to get really fast.  Someone might be depending on us for real.

We learned to look out for the human dangers.  Being gung-ho.  Being swept along by the enthusiasm of others.

We learned to constantly assess our surroundings, checking whether they matched with our expectations and reassessing our plans if necessary.

But the most important things we learned were this:

Practice like your life depends on it.

Travel like none of it works.