Avalanche Skills Course 4 Day Town Based

Location

Wānaka, Otago Region

Group Size

6 people per guide

Duration

4 days

At the end of the course you will be a competent member of a ski or splitboard touring group, being able to plan trips appropriate to the group and conditions. It will give you the tools to begin to make your own assessments of the avalanche danger based on information gathered from past and current weather observations, and contribute to safe decision making as you venture into more remote areas of the NZ backcountry.

With the syllabus supplied by the New Zealand Mountain Safety Council, the Avalanche Skills Course (Level 2) is designed to deliver quality avalanche education with the non-helicopter based option keeping the costs down. Practical sessions are conducted at local ski fields for back country access over a 4 day week or split over 2 weekends.

The course is designed for people who want to ski & snowboard tour outside patrolled ski area boundaries and in the big hills. The focus is on preparation for a back country ski or snowboarding trip, decision making in avalanche terrain, and rescue skills. While the goal is to not be caught in an avalanche, time will be spent learning and practicing companion rescue.

To get the most out of this course you should have some knowledge of back country touring and be familiar with transitioning and traveling on ski touring gear. Note that there is no requirement to attend the Avalanche Skills Course level 1 Prior to this course, it is simply a longer opportunity to train and learn the skills. All our avalanche courses are run by Avalanche Risk Management (Level 6) qualified mountain or ski guides with many years of experience in ski tour guiding, heli-ski guiding, or in ski patrol. Ski touring equipment is required.