February was a busy month in the San Juans, with numerous ice courses/trips, avalanche courses, and backcountry skiing days. Among those trips, was a 2 day Intermediate Ice Course that we conducted in both the Ouray Ice Park and the popular Skylight area. Four great friends came for 2 days of ice training amidst some fabulous weather and fat ice conditions.

Check out these videos of backcountry skiing and avalanche coursework in the San Juans with our guides and instructors. The footage is provided by our friends at IDTV and thanks to our sponsors RAB, Osprey, and BCA!

Though snow conditions were tough, Dana and I still had a great Introduction to winter mountaineering course this last weekend.

Day one consisted of Dana slaying it on the vertical ice of Cascade Canyon where he learned the basics of belaying, rope work, and climbing techniques.

Day two we made our way to over 11,000 feet to camp and live on the flanks of Engineer Mtn and learned how to set up a winter camp.

Day three was spent learning the basics of winter camping, snow condition analysis, anchors and snow anchors, traveling in avalanche terrain/ using avalanche gear, self arrest, traveling as a rope team, and more.

Even though the snow conditions didn’t allow us a summit attempt, we had a great fourth day in the Ouray Ice park going over what was learned and slaying more ice.

All in all, we had a great course and I can’t wait for the next one.

click here for a calender of the next course

BG

This last weekend’s Level 1 AIARE avalanche course was a huge success. The recent storm that rocked Southwest Colorado and the San Juan Mountains left us a great snowpack to play with during this course.

After our classroom day of great learning, we ventured up toward Cascade Canyon north of Durango Mountain Resort to practice our companion rescue skills in the beautiful sun of Southwest Colorado. We finished the day by heading to Colbank Pass to dig in the new snow and see how it was bonding with the old snow surface. The snow was deep with almost 300 centimeters in some spots! We all learned a ton about looking for strong over weak layers and performing some useful bonding tests to see how different layers could potentially be problems for backcountry travel.

Our last day was a huge success with some beautiful weather gracing us again. We ventured up in the Red Mountain Pass area where we were able to get some great glimpses of the alpine and the avalanche activity that had been occurring as recently as the day before. Great views of wind loading were obvious clues to the recent weather phenomenon that brought the new snow last week. The skiing was incredible with preserved powder on most aspects. This was the capstone to the day with smiles all around and lots of great knowledge gleaned from the full three days of avalanche education! Until next time…

Aaron