At 7.50am after quite a large night the previous evening our house was up ready to go off to the second day if our avalanche course… Until I realised I’d lost my backpack containing my transceiver, probe and shovel!! After some frantic looking I went to my housemates to ask for help and they put our avalanche techniques to great use remembering that my transceiver might still be on. After switching theirs to ‘receive’ they quickly tracked down my backpack under the bed and we were ready to go.
Day 2 can only be described as an epic game of hide and seek, but this time it is backpacks with transceivers in that get buried, and our aim is to track them down, probe and dig them out in the quickest time possible – saving those caught in an avalanche – boys v girls.
It does sound a lot more exciting than it actually is and after digging a trench to look at snow formations and measuring gradients of different sections of the slope we were all avalanched out and heading back to base for our debrief.
WE ALL PASSED wooo! And after receiving our certificates – very proud moment – we got in a very much needed hottub to relax.