The Backcountry: A place as dangerous as it is alluring. Countless tales of inexperienced, ill-prepared winter sports enthusiasts perishing in avalanches have previously put me off venturing outside of patrolled areas. The only avalanche knowledge I've previously needed was that I knew little about them and (unlike many) wasn't prepared to pay the ultimate price for that elusive out of bounds powder stash.

But times change......... ....those elusive powder stashes have started to look more and more appealing over the last couple of years. Since then I've used pretty much every means known to man in my quest never to ride on a groomed run ever again. That said, I've always used guides and let them take the ultimate responsibility for choosing a route, which will get us both home safely at the end of the day.

Steve and Kam earning their turns

Finally my desire to explore the world of backcountry touring, coupled with my inquisitive nature made me decide to go on an avalanche awareness course to see what all the fuss was about and ultimately to see if I could go it alone and return home intact. I decided on a Canadian Avalanche Association course, primarily because that was where I was going on my holiday, but I would imagine most introductory courses are fairly similar. It was clear from the CAA website that the RAC recreational avalanche course was the one for me. This is a 2 day course, with both classroom and field sessions designed to provide skiers/snowboarders with a basic understanding of avalanches.

They also run Level 1 and 2 courses designed for professionals working in the avalanche industry, but if you want to do one of these you need to complete the RAC course first. The CAA do not certify the course providers who teach the RAC courses, however they do provide a curriculum and impose minimum time requirements. The list of providers is fairly lengthy and I eventually settled on a course run by Mountain Pursuits, based in Fernie, BC. The cost of the whole course was 130 Canadian dollars not including the 70 dollars for rental of touring and safety equipment. 5 months and about 20 E-Mails later it was all sorted. I'd rented my transceiver, snowshoes, shovel and probe from The Guides Hut in Fernie and it was time to go back to school. I met up with the rest of the group in the Central Hotel; there were 7 of us in all, 2 snowboarders, 3 skiers and 2 telemarkers. We introduced ourselves to Steve Kuijt, our guide, and began by telling each other about our previous backcountry experiences. Steve's guiding experience includes heli-ski guiding with CMH Bugaboos and Mike Weigle's Heli-skiing, nine years snowcat-ski guiding at Island Lake in Fernie, BC, as well as ski tour guiding in most of the major mountain ranges in B.C. It became apparent that Steve's major passion was doing trips to remote huts, although he splits his time between this, RAC courses and working at Island Lake.

The classroom sessions weren't as structured as I'd expected, they were always quite informal and not at all like being back in school. The majority of the course material is available in the book, which is supplied with the course entitled "Freeriding in Avalanche Terrain, A Snowboarders Guide", although skiers receive another similar book containing certain information specific to skiers. In addition to this Steve showed us his (rather extensive) slide collection featuring all manner of avalanches and avalanche terrain to illustrate several points. The topics covered in the classroom sessions were the formation and nature of avalanches, avalanche terrain, factors affecting snow stability, an introduction to mountain snowpack, safety measures and self rescue/transceivers, winter backcountry travel and assessing avalanche danger. The suggested classroom total is a minimum of 4 hours, however we spent a lot more time than that mostly because of Steve's enthusiasm for the subject. We also spent a reasonable amount of time comparing different types of touring equipment throughout the course, both in the classroom and in the field sessions, which is not part of the curriculum, but which was incredibly useful. Continued on next page.

Myself and Steve stomping into the back of beyond