It's been a while since my last blog. After a Christmas lull, I've been busy in Scotland and struggled to find time to record all the excitement !
However, I've just returned from my International Mountain Leader winter training course in the French Alps, so here are the highlights.
The course was based closed to Grand Bornand in the Aravis region of the Alps about 1.25 hrs from Geneva airport at a location called ' Auberge Nordique' - clue in the name there.
I arrived at Geneva airport to a surprise greeting from two of the my summer comrades and we all made our way to Grand Bornand courtesy of a lift from my summer roomy Giles who was already in France, to find a total of 7 people from my summer training out of a group of 12, so it was a bit of a summer reunion.
The accommodation was comfortable - if a little like a French holiday camp and the food serviceable rather than quality,though it certainly improved from the Sunday evening when we had endive (similar to a leek) wrapped in ham for main course - yuk !
The focus of the week is very much on snowshoeing and 'rolling nordic terrain' with a lot of avalanche awareness and environmental knowledge thrown in.
Our first day was based in the valley around the centre learning basic snowshoe technique (it's not hard !) assessing conditions and looking at suitability of the terrain. We were also introduced to avalanche transceivers with a basic overview.
Days 2-4 involved trips to various places, learning more about the whole snowshoe thing combining on-piste and off-piste sections, assessing what would be suitable terrain for clients and all the time looking at conditions, assessing snow pack and avalanche conditions. Due to the warming weather, we were fortunate (?) to observe quite a bit of evidence of avalanche activity including some full depth slides.
Quick 'on the hoof' avalanche tests were combined with pit analysis, ruschblock and shear tests and best of all, I got to use my new snow analysis kit and snow saw :-) We also saw a neat trick to highlight snow layers including the use of Ribena or hot chocolate !
Tuesday saw us learning more about avalanche transceivers and the techniques involved in finding single burials - the young dudes in the group seemingly indulging in contests as to how deep and small they could bury the transceivers.
On Wednesday we used a narrow ridge line to practice some emergency rope skills including bucket seat belay, for which I was the guinea pig lowered down a 50 degree slope. We also set up buried axe and ski-pole belays to back up a bucket seat, plus a buried rucksack which the whole group of 6 tried and failed to test to destruction.
Thursday carried on the themes of the previous days with a very pleasant walk through the forest which allowed us to see more animal signs. We also covered multiple avalanche burials and the techniques required along with probe and shovel techniques.
Throughout the week knowledge of the environment was a constant theme - primarily identification of trees and their uses, at which some of my fellow aspirants were very good and made me realise that my own is fairly weak. Animal tracks and signs were another strand, and though not as common we did find signs of fox, rabbit. We were also fortunate to spot a few birds including crested tit, nuthatch and treecreeper.
The final day was a bit of a wash up of outstanding items at the base, and included building of emergency shelters - digging into a bank and a shovel-up - and a simulated multiple avalanche search and rescue which led to the funniest incident of the week when one of the instructors buried his sac in the snow and asked us to find it using a probe line ... 2 hours later it still hadn't been found and the instructor was now getting a bit desperate because his passport was inside it and he had an evening flight to catch ! We probed (and dug) the same area again and again because he was sure of the line he had placed it. Finally, after a break for lunch, we finally widened the search and found it within about 15 mins just outside the area originally defined, much to his relief :-)
The week completed with a classroom chat about summer and winter assessment and an individual de-brief, which, thankfully, was a pretty positive one for me.
All in all a very pleasant week if not quite what I expected - Winter IML is definitely more mellow than UK Winter ML ! Being re-united with a very sociable group from the summer, as well as some sound new guys certainly helped, as did amenable weather and civilised day lengths.
As for the rucksack incident ? I'm naming no names .... unless of course I don't pass my IML assessment :-)
