Day 4 and 5

On day 4 of the course we went to Christianie Trees, still in Rogers Pass. After quite a long hike in the valley we headed upwards. The snow was really moist and stuck to the skinns, making it hard to brake trail. We dug a snowpit on a east aspect at 1500m, which didn't give that interesting results. But then on 1900m the snow was complately different. At the treeline there were whoomphing and cracking everywere. All convex slopes collapsed and slid under us. We did a Rutchblock test of grade 2, an other comressions tests with easy, sudden collapse. In other words, the snow was very unstable. Skiing down north-east facing slopes were therefore a bit scetchy and we triggered couple of avlanches of size 1-2. The skiing was quite good, all though short, and the day ended with a long nd narrow luge track out the valley. This was yet another learningfull day.

Day 5 and last day of the course was set to "the Christmas Trees" and area. Again a hike up in the valley before starting gaining some altitude. A snowpit on a south aspect shoved stable conditions and a thick layer of crust burried 15cm down. Further up, the snowpack surprised even Steve, our course leader. He managed to remote trigger a large north-east facing slope anf even further up, at 2300m, he was almost caught in one himself. Skiing donw was nice and at the end we did another staged "avalanche rescue". Its getting better for each time, and now we found al the three "people" in 9 minutes =)

All in all, we have learned a lot during the course. Not only how to dig snowpits and doing tests. But I feel I have gotten a much better understanding of how the snowpack works. It will be fun to try this out back in Norway.