Skiing with Curiosity--My Journey to AIARE PRO 1

Course perks and benefits.

I wrote this last winter, a week after I finished my AIARE PRO 1 Avalanche course. I was buzzing from the experience—my mind churning with all of the new lessons and the breath of fresh air that the instructors and the course brought to how I think about being in and working in the mountains. As I reflect back on the course and prepare for this coming winter, this experience stands out as a very important one. I made lasting friends and connections, and gained valuable knowledge and insight. Here’s a little backstory on how I got to this point where I was ready to take this course.

Last week I was fortunate enough to spend five nights and days up at Mt. Baker, staying on the mountain at the Mountaineers Lodge, with 17 other women, to take my AIARE PRO 1 avalanche course.

I can’t believe I’ve waited this long to take a course like this! I got my first sponsorship contract in 2003, and even though I wasn’t fully supporting myself through skiing for another few years, I’ve basically been skiing professionally in the backcountry for 20 years and recreationally for a few years before that. I’ve been extremely fortunate in that I’ve never been buried in an avalanche, but I’ve set off several and narrowly avoided getting caught each time. Had I had more education, think of how many near-misses I could have possibly avoided! In addition, I’ve spent a lot of mental energy on the uncertainty and the unknowing that comes from placing my trust in someone else—a guide or more experienced backcountry partner—and wondering if my helplessness and lack of control was contributing to unsafe decision-making. I’ve also spent a lot of that time in dumb, blissful naïveté.

Practicing good terrain and group management, and selecting a good pit location.

In many ways, I wish I would have taken this course a long time ago. Yet, in more ways, I realize that I took it at the exact right time for me. For one thing, it’s taken me years of backcountry experience to gain a deeper understanding many of the concepts involving snowpack, weather, and mountains. Moreover, for the first half of my career I was so focused on doing the thing—the line, the trip, the air—that I couldn’t be bothered to take time away from that focus to work on seemingly peripheral extras like safety and avalanche classes. Leave that to the professionals, I thought. Except for I was a professional, too—it’s just taken me this long to understand what that fully means for me. It means I want to be an active participant in the decision-making on any given day in the backcountry. It means I want to involve everyone in the discussion, and

When I first began skiing in the backcountry, the prevailing attitude amongst backcountry professionals (guides, avalanche educators) and experienced backcountry skiers was that you had to know everything and be confident about it to belong in the backcountry. It was the opposite of curiosity. I overheard a guide one time scoff about someone’s inexperience and how they didn’t even know how to use their beacon—they proceeded to grab the person’s beacon, turn it on for them, and say something like “Don’t blow it” before walking over to the snowcat. I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want anyone to know how inexperienced I was. I didn’t really know how to use my beacon, either. I had never assembled my probe. I’d used my shovel to help build a jump. Every time I would be guided in a heli or a snowcat or ski-touring, I was so relieved when the safety briefing was brief—turn your beacon on and follow the basic flux line, call it good.

Practicing terrain assessment, looking for visual clues in the weather and snow.

Knowledge can be scary sometimes—it’s often easier to just pretend the risk doesn’t exist rather than to wonder what could happen. But after witnessing a few close calls, and hearing about accidents that affected friends, I knew it was time to pull my head out of the sand and get curious. Some friends and I got together and took our AIARE Level 1 course, and that experience of an all-women’s course with an incredible instructor (one of my amazing mentors, Lel Tone), made me see that I had been looking at things backwards. I wanted to learn more, and my friends and I also now wanted to help others learn in this same way, where all questions are good questions, saying no and asking questions is encouraged, and everyone belongs—it’s just up to us to figure out where and when.

I’m so glad this long path eventually led me back around to realizing how much I wanted to take this next step on my own journey towards becoming a certified AIARE instructor. My next post will be more about the nuts and bolts of the PRO 1 course. And please head to avtraining.org to find a class near you and start your own lifelong journey of backcountry experience!

Education can be fun!