Glenmore Avalanche Course

by Graeme Ralph

What do you get if you bring together good snow cover in the Cairngorms and a group of ski tourers of varying age and experience all looking to learn about avalanches? If you manage to hook up with an experienced instructor, then it’s a perfect combination. This is what brought Mags and Adam, Neil, Dean, Chris and me along with teacher Malcolm, together at Glenmore Lodge for a weekend of ‘Avalanche Awareness for Back Country Skiers’ in early March 2020 following a month of cold, stormy weather.

We all met up, along with others attending a huge variety of other winter related courses, straight after breakfast on the Saturday morning for an introduction to Glenmore Lodge, Those that required it could borrow the appropriate equipment, but we all had our own touring equipment so got straight to work in the classroom. Malcolm gave us an outline of what to expect, and to my relief indicated that we would be out on the hill for around half of each day for practical learning.

We began by looking at the range of easily accessible online mountain weather forecasts, on the basis that this would determine whether a tour was possible at all. This was followed by a detailed look at how to use and interpret the excellent Scottish Avalanche Information Service daily reports of avalanche risk, along with blogs and photographs left by their field staff which together are a valuable addition to the written reports. Using both sources of information, along with a map, we planned a half day outing to look at features on the ground in spite of the wild, windy and wet conditions expected.

Once out on the hill, Malcolm highlighted the importance of being aware of what we were finding around us and how it compared with the avalanche report and, vitally, whether we needed to compare what we had read against what we were seeing on the ground, and the resulting potential need for a change of route. We looked at the 4 A’s – Aspect, Altitude, Angle and Anatomy - of the slopes around us and how each affected the build-up of snow. We dug pits to assess the different layers within the snow, also looking under the microscope at the different snow types to check for any weaker layers. A transceiver rescue practice concluded our outing.

Back at the lodge coffee and cake was followed by a debrief of what we had learned that day, and initial planning for our outing on Day 2. In the evening there were a couple of highly informative lectures for the attendees of all courses on winter mountaineering topics.

Sunday was a calmer and sunnier day. We looked at various aspects of snow science in the classroom, along with the human influences on group dynamics and its effect on decision making and safety in general, and with particular reference to avalanches. We discussed avalanche “red flags” to watch for when out in winter conditions such as new snow, existing avalanche evidence, rapid warming etc. Next, we spent some time planning a suitable half day trip, gathered our gear and headed out to use some of our newfound skills on a much colder day with plenty of blowing snow and moderate visibility.

There is a lot to cover on a course like this, but I am pleased to say that Malcolm found a good balance between classroom and on the hill teaching, aided by the good snow cover and reasonable weather conditions. I would recommend this course for those of you who want to ski tour safely and would like to thank AAC(UK) for helping to fund my course.

Snow profiles – and if you look carefully ski tracks from earlier transceiver search
Photos by Graeme Ralph

A reasonably snowy (but wind affected) Cairngorms at the end of the course

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