Students observing the snowpack while touring on day 1 of AIARE 1. Photo: Zeb Blais.
Why Choose Blackbird for your Avalanche Course?
Since its founding, Blackbird Mountain Guides has striven to provide the best avalanche courses in California and Washington. Our strategy has been simple: start with the amazing instructors and rethink how avalanche course curriculum is delivered.
Avalanche Instructors
Our instructor team consists of highly trained AIARE course leaders, IFMGA Mountain Guides and experienced AIARE Instructors. AIARE Instructors and Course Leaders go through multiple courses on snowpack, weather, human factors, and calculating and managing risk in avalanche terrain. Beyond technical avalanche knowledge they study how people learn and how to teach the AIARE curriculum to our students. Instructors become certified to teach after completing several professional level avalanche courses and observing multiple AIARE courses. They must teach a minimum of 10 avalanche courses under a certified Course Leader before they can advance to the role of Course Leader themselves. After attaining these credentials, AIARE Instructors and Course Leaders must take continuing education credits to stay current on the latest snow science and avalanche instruction techniques.
Beyond AIARE training, the Blackbird instructor team trains together during in-house training sessions each season. During these trainings, we share tips on teaching courses, managing avalanche hazard and to stay up to date on new statistics and techniques. These sessions are critical to get our team to gel and provide a consistent experience across courses. It also helps to pass on experience and learnings between our team members.
Rethinking Avalanche Education
When we started, we knew we could deliver more meaningful education to students by changing how the avalanche education curriculum was delivered. We deployed two innovations in avalanche education that have become key reasons for why students choose our courses:
- An easy to use and engaging online curriculum
- A totally new format for avalanche rescue courses: Lift Access
1. Building the Blackbird Online Avalanche Course
Not every student wants to take a day off work to be lectured on avalanche types and characteristics. We knew that people wanted a flexible option so that they wouldn't have to devote 3 consecutive days to complete an AIARE 1 course, especially if one of those days was spent inside a classroom. We also knew that fully field-based courses lack the knowledge base needed to cover the range of avalanche problems, snow climates and layer types that backcountry travelers might encounter in the wild. It's tough to describe theoretical conditions and snowpacks in the field in a meaningful and memorable way! A light bulb went off - an online course could be the answer!
If we were going to use an online course to provide the knowledge base for our avalanche courses, it would need to be engaging and effective. We built our course from the ground up with case studies, video, pictures, and quizzes to make the course fun and memorable. Shooting on location in our operating areas, we edited the hours and hours of video and content down to our online course for AIARE 1 and AIARE 2.
Our online course has received rave reviews from clients and provides an ongoing resource for students, long after they've finished the course. This testimonial from Paul C tells the story of many of our clients' experience:
"I completed the AIARE-1 certification with Blackbird, and my experience totally exceeded expectations. The program was professionally run. The online component was engaging and interesting, and the instructor was super knowledgeable, considerate and friendly. I was surprised by how many times he's taught the course, and yet can still keep it fresh and exciting. I'll definitely do any refresher, and the AIARE-2 course with Blackbird!"
- Paul C
Participants practice digging up a buried companion during a scenario on Blackbird's Lift-Accessed Avalanche Rescue Course in Tahoe. Photo: Zeb Blais.
2. Lift-Accessed Gets It Done For Effective Avalanche Rescue Practice
Avalanche Rescue is a key component of staying safe in avalanche terrain and it takes a LOT of time to master. As a former ski patroller at Palisades Tahoe, I spent hours each week practicing different burial scenarios to perfect my rescue abilities. With each scenario I learned little lessons that accumulated to a strong confidence in my rescue skills.
The problem with most avalanche rescue courses is that they often spend most of the day on nearly flat terrain in an attempt to the maximize the number of repetitions. Repetitions are good, but terrain is a significant factor in a rescue and without any slope, the practice is much less effective. Participants in these programs spend most of their time working back and forth across meadows in touring mode with their skins on, rather than practicing top-down rescue scenarios on realistic slopes.
For Blackbird, the answer was clear: a Lift-Accessed Avalanche Rescue Course would provide realistic terrain and the speed to do multiple scenarios. Our course begins with fundamental rescue skills like beacon basics and fine searches, probing and shoveling techniques and quickly progresses to an instructor demonstration scenario and student led scenarios that are debriefed by our expert AIARE instructors. Lifts allow us to set up the scenarios quickly and get in multiple laps while putting us at the top of realistic avalanche debris paths.
Our expert instructor team, annual in-house training and our course innovations are what set us apart from other avalanche education providers. Reach out via phone or email us - we'll be happy to discuss what makes our programs the clear choice over our competitors! But don't take our word for it, read on about what people are saying about Blackbird Avalanche Courses on our Google Reviews!
About the Author
Zeb Blais is an AIARE Course Leader and IFMGA Mountain Guide based in Truckee California. He loves teaching people in the mountains - whether its an avalanche course or a mountaineering program, seeing his clients progress in their mountain objectives is the most rewarding part of his job. Zeb enjoys all the disciplines of mountain guiding - ski, rock and alpine climbing - but skiing is his first love. In the winter he enjoys backcountry skiing, guiding local and international ski trips, and teaching avalanche courses across the west coast, from Bishop, California to Mt Baker, Washington.