Avalanche Awareness Night coming up

Carbon County Search and Rescue is sponsoring Avalanche Awareness Night on Jan. 8 at the Platte Valley Community Center. Search and rescue member Landon McGuire planned the event and will be the main presenter.

“The more people we get to attend, the more people we educate and the less the chance we’ll be out digging them out of slides,” McGuire said. According to McGuire it usually takes about 30 to 45 minutes just to get to a trailhead before search and rescue can head into the backcountry to offer aid.

The presentation will include videos and discussions on safety important to anyone who uses the mountain back country in the winter. “Even if you are into extreme snow angel making in the back country you need to know snow safety,” McGuire quoted from one of the videos to be shown.

Search and rescue has been trained by members of the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center for the last couple of years, and the two-day class has been of benefit to local search and rescue. McGuire said that during the annual fall search and rescue meeting a group decided they would like to have training for the community. “So, I kind of took the bull by the horns and decided I’ll jump in and do it,” McGuire said.

Avalanche Awareness night will feature a program developed by the Utah Avalanche Center called “Know Before You Go.” The night’s program will cover gear needed for back country safety, how to use that gear, terrain navigation skills, avalanche threat indicators and basic preparedness. The basic gear requirements have changed some in the past couple of years with the widespread availability of air bag systems in backpacks that can deploy during an avalanche. “For years the list of essential equipment has been beacon, shovel probe and now they are starting to go to beacon, shovel, probe and avi-pack,” McGuire said. The new air bag systems won’t save you from trauma but they increase survival statistics greatly.

The program covers the gear needed as well as how to use your tools to be safe in the snow.

Terrain navigation and identification of avalanche prone areas can help back country travelers avoid slopes that are ready to slide and terrain features that they could become mired in.

McGuire has been working with the Bridger-Teton Avalanche center for years to develop programs in the Platte Valley area. Because of this effort, there is now a crowd-sourced avalanche and snow observation website available at jhavalanche.org/mbow which provides detailed local observations for those who use the back country in the Snowies and Sierra Madres. “The more information you share with each other, the better the heads up you are going to have before you go up there,” McGuire said.

All ages are welcome to the awareness night and no child is to young to start learning the basics according to McGuire.

Shively Hardware donated an Ortovox 3+ avalanche transceiver which will go to the lucky raffle ticket holder of the evening.

Avalanche Awareness Night will be held from 6 – 7 p.m. on Jan. 8 at the Platte Valley Community Center auditorium. Admission is free.