The Haines Avalanche Center kicked off its winter education schedule last week, hosting two companion rescue practices on Nov. 5, one outside the Haines Borough Public Library and the other at the Mosquito Lake Community Center.
The avalanche center is offering 15 courses and workshops this winter. The large number of educational offerings is a response to backcountry deaths in recent years, according to Haines Avalanche Center director Erik Stevens.
“In previous years, we’d try to get in three to six classes in Haines, but last year, after some of the recent accidents, we wanted to push education even stronger. We did a blitz of sixteen classes. This year, we’re trying to hold steady with fifteen,” Stevens said.
The center is offering 10 free workshops open to all skill levels every other week until mid-March. The workshops alternate between companion rescue practices and Zoom presentations about avalanche safety and related topics.
“They focus on general awareness, what avalanche terrain is and how to avoid it, how to have the right gear,” Stevens said. “We hope people come with questions.”
The center is also partnering with the Alaska Avalanche School to put on five certified avalanche trainings including two avalanche rescue courses, a Level 1 course for motorized users, a Level 1 course for non-motorized users and a Level 2 course for non-motorized users.
“The Level 1 motorized course focuses on snowmachines,” Stevens said. “Backcountry considerations are a little different on snowmachines. Another thing that’s new this year is the level two. It hasn’t been offered in Haines in a while.”
Level 1 courses focus on the basics, identifying avalanche terrain and reading forecasts to make conservative decisions. Level 2 is about making your own observations in the field, “doing observations to make decisions about where you can and can’t go safely,” he said. The avalanche rescue courses are single-day classes that teach beacon rescue skills. Signups are available at https://alaskasnow.org/learn/.
Stevens said he thinks there’s been increased interest in avalanche safety in the community in the wake of recent accidents. Last winter, two residents were killed in an avalanche while backcountry snowboarding. Two years ago, a snowboarder was killed near a popular skiing area on the backside of Mount Ripinski.
In addition to offering educational opportunities, Stevens said this season, the center will focus on providing weekly snow condition observations, as well as periodic avalanche forecasts.
“When you go out into the mountains in the winter, you need three pieces-you’ve got to have education, hands-on experience to make decisions; observations, real data about what conditions are like; and the third piece is forecasting, professional forecasters to interpret available information and boil it down to critical dangers,” he said. “With those three things and proper gear, people can go out in pretty much any conditions and keep themselves safe. Otherwise, the odds are kind of stacked against you.”
Stevens said the frequency with which the center is able to provide forecasts depends on funding. In April, the Haines Avalanche Center requested $20,000 from the borough, a request the assembly ignored. In past years, the center has received between $1,500 and $5,000 from the borough, supplemented by fundraising from other sources.
“The only way to have a regular avalanche forecast is with some level of borough funding,” Stevens said. While the center has three part-time employees, current fundraising isn’t enough to bring someone on full-time.
“We all need to be working other jobs, which makes it difficult to have a reliable forecast,” he said.
The next free workshop is a Zoom “Avalanche Awareness” presentation on Nov. 17 at 5:30 p.m.