SKI & BOARDFree Mountain Safety & Avalanche Awareness Classes
The David Pettigrew Memorial Foundation is pleased to announce its second season sponsoring mountain safety courses. The course will also be sponsored by the Association of Professional Patrollers (“APP”) with the support and collaboration of Stevens Pass, The Summit at Snoqualmie and Mission Ridge. The courses are FREE and the schedule is listed below.
The Mountain Safety and Awarness Course will emphasize ski area basics (know the code), skiing with buddies, tree well and deep snow safety and basic first-aid. Although the courses will be directed primarily to 10-15 year olds, others are welcome to register. Class size will be limited to no more than 25 students per class, and there will be at least 3 instructors for each class.
The Intermediate Mountain Safety: Avalanche Awareness will include both indoor and outdoor activities. The inside curriculum will address recognizing and avoiding avalanche terrain, understanding how layered snow contributes to avalanching, understanding red flags and weather indicators, learning basic companion rescue, and ski area avalanche control techniques and boundary policies. The outside portion of the class will include Avalanche terrain and terrain traps, basic route selection, snow pack layering, current snow pack conditions and weather effects, and companion recovery, including probing, shoveling, and beacon use. The class will be based off the American Avalanche Associations recomended guidlines for a introduction to avalanches field course. Each class will start at 9:00 a.m. and run until 3:00 p.m. with a break for lunch. These classes are recommended for mountain enthusiasts who are starting to tour on their own and possibly venturing out of the ski area boundaries.
The primary instructors will be Corey Rubinfeld (an APP certified ski patroller, professional ski patroller and medical trainer at Stevens Pass, AIARE Avalanche Instructor, high school science teacher and course director for Outward Bound Wilderness) and Kevin Marston (16 years professional ski patroller, currently at Alpental Ski Area at Snoqualmie, a Washington State DOT avalanche forecaster, and current president of the Backcountry Rescue Canines Association). The additional instructors will be from the three participating ski areas.
Proper Beacon, Probe, and Shovel Usage Class
Alpental 9am
January 2, 8, 16, 23, 30
Intro Class "Basic Mountain Safety
Alpental 8am
February 13th, March 21st
Mission Ridge 10am
February 21st
Stevens Pass 9am
February 28th, March 14th
Intermediate Mountain Safety & Avy Awareness
Alpental 8am
March 14th, 28th
Stevens Pass 9am
March 7th, 21st