Winter is in full swing!

Sorry about the delay in posting folks, but it has been a very busy December. The month started off great by dumping waist deep powder allowing a few of us to snowshoe up the mountain to get some lines in before the resort opened.


overnight snow to start the season with
















I would say the highlight of decomber would have been the avalanche skills training course. Spending days outside digging snow profiles to learn about the snowpack and learning how to use our transceivers was a ton of fun. We all learned lots and I know that I feel a lot more comfortable in the backcountry as a result.

Survival night

I have never gone that long without food or water, ever.
This portion of our program was taught to us by Jon Merrit, survival expert. Jon felt that in order to have a real survival experience we ought to know what it feels like to be truly deprived of food, water, sleep and warmth. Also, to make this a real experience there were only two "things" that you were allowed to bring (other then clothes). The list of things consisted of a knife, a cup of peanuts, a headlamp, a book and a garbage bag. I forgot my headlamp and only brought my knife. A day before our adventure, starting at noon we were not allowed to eat in order to get an idea of what it is like to try and think clearly without anything in your stomach. The next day we started bright and early at the school and jumped in the vans to get to our back-country solo survival sites. Let's not forget that at this point we have not had anything to eat for about 20 hours, and now we are not allowed water for the rest of our survival experience. Needless to say, we were a little grumpy. Off we went to our solo plots to spend the day alone in the mountains building our shelters and trying to pass the time. Around 6pm we were taken away from our survival shelters and brought together in small groups of 3 or 4 to build a group survival shelter. We were given a match or two to try to start a fire and warm ourselves up a bit. At about midnight (we don't know the actual time, no watches) just after getting comfortable in our group shelters we were again taken away for another survival exercise, trying to keep warmth in your body with no shelter or fire. So my group of 4 found some cedar boughs and made a make shift bed to try and lie down and spoon for warmth. We rotated positions so that everyone got some time as the "little spoon" and that kept us relatively warm. After what seemed like ages until we were told we could make our way back to our original shelters. A short 15 min hike and we were back in our plot of shelter sites. Now around 3am we were to spend the rest of the night in our original shelter, sans fire. I wish I would have knows that before I built an open concept fire heat reflecting shelter (see photo below). So I did jumping jacks every ten minutes to keep my feet from freezing and counted the trains going by until morning. That morning, after having no food for about 48 hours, no water for 24 hours and next to zero hours of sleep, we did a deep woods navigation exercise in order to find the vans and get home.

First Aid

Gotta say, I'm am pretty happy that the OEC (outdoor emergency care) or OFA (occupational first aid)  is finished. It was a 110 hour course over a period of two weeks. It would be lying if I said it was an easy course. We usually spent the mornings in class learning about anatomy and different types of injuries.

Death by power point 

 In the afternoon we were shown how to deal with amputated limbs, open fractures, arterial bleeding, spinal injuries, myocardial infarctions, and so on.

This guy was pretty awesome!

Jock with a spinal injury

Canoeing 101

The next thing to check off after rock climbing was canoeing. We spent the week at a local lake learning flat water skills to get us prepared for our instructor certificate and for whitewater canoeing. Each morning at the lake looked like a movie set. Golden sun peaking through a thick layer of fog was breathtaking.

Once we wrapped up our learnings on the lake we went for a day paddle down the Elk river. We hit a few swifts and class 1's and for most of us who have not canoed in moving water before, it was a great chance to practice those eddy turns and peal outs. We even had the chance to surf the canoes in a standing wave. Can't wait for the next high-water season.

Rock Climbing In Montana

Possibly one of my favorite trips so far was our Rock 1 course in Stonehill, Montana. We left the school bright and early expecting holdups at the US boarder. Fortunately we got through pretty easily and with enough time to get in a little rappelling at the crag before setting up camp down the road.

Doing some rappelling

 We were once again being trained by the same ACMG guides as the mountaineering trip with the welcome addition of Patty (another FULL mountain guide with the ACMG). As with the mountaineering trip, we were learning more knots, proper anchor setups, rappelling and belaying techniques, as well as learning how to thread and rappel at the end of the day. For the most part our days in Montana were spent racking up mileage on the rock, and I gotta say, it was pretty great. Sometimes I found it hard to believe that were are earning credits while having so much fun.

Sierra's thoughts on mountaineering

      I was lucky enough to get a fellow student to do a short description about thier experience during the mountaineering trip. Here is what Sierra thought of the excursion.

"What could be fun about walking on ice?" is what came to mind when preparing for the MAST programs second out trip of the year. But as I was putting on my spiky crampons, sturdy helmet, and secure harness at the toe of the glacier on our ascent to the summit of Boundary Peak in the Columbia Icefields, it dawned on me what the beauty of mountaineering was. As I looked around me a sense of wonder overcame my skepticism; "I am on a moving body of pre historic ice that slowly carved out these breath taking mountains around me, how cool is that?" Getting used to walking in crampons was a challenge for me because the technique requires a duck like gait wide and flat. Moreover each step must be painfully calculated to ensure a firm grip on the ice. Walking and climbing up a 60-70 degree pitch with nothing but two partners fastened on a climbing rope with prussiks confirmed the reality of my situation and elevated my heart rate rapidly. One fall from any three of us and we could have slid down the rough, icy slope. With deep breaths and an intent focus on mountaineering techniques, we sauntered our way up to a flat landing where a new challenge awaited. Leading the group, I used my ice axe to prod for crevasses (cracks in the ice that are easy to fall into), jumping over any snow covered cracks I found trying not to think about the possibility of falling in. I surprised myself by how much I liked the complexity of the rope systems and safe glacier travel, the methodical process of setting up to start an ascent in the cold mountain air and the radiating sun was centering.

Columbia Icefields

         Following our Mt Fisher trip, we spent some time in class learning how to tie knots, set up anchors, put on crampons and other climbing and mountaineering fundamentals.

       After a week of classroom theory we put some of the skills we learned to the test out on the Columbia Icefield. Unfortunately I had to pull out on the second day due to a wisdom tooth issue, but from what I heard it was a great trip filled with crevasse rescue training and bluebird glacier travel. All in all another great MAST trip.

Mt. Fisher Trip

The first out-trip was a 5 day hiking excursion around the Mt. Fisher area, with the summit of Mt. Fisher as a main objective. 

 The first few days were beautiful and sunny but unfortunately the weather changed for the worse on the third day. We woke up to a quite a few centimeters of snow on the ground and after doing some weather observations and getting a forecast we decided to evacuate before more snow came! In the end we got some very helpful navigation practice and started to get an idea of what its like to carry your house on your back through the mountains. Here is a link to the Google Earth route of our trip. http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1374856&#Post1374856

Welcome to the MAST 2010/2011 Blog

Hello and welcome. If you are reading this chances are you know someone taking the Mountain Adventure Skills Training course with the College of the Rockies or are interested in taking the course yourself.
This blog is designed to help keep you up to date with all of the course happenings.