Level 2: The Level after Level 1

Snow geekery at its finest. Note the shovel placement to keep those centigrade dial stem thermometers nice and accurate. Is that a 90-degree corner? Why yes it is. Thank you for noticing.

I beat Level 2 of Avalanche Education last week. The end boss was real hard. I had to get all funky and whip out an up-down-left-left-A-B combo, front flip over the avalanche path of death, and then memorize about 12 gazillion codes and acronyms, BIWWWI (but it was well worth it). ILAT (I learned a ton). And I got to splurge on some new fancy, SST (snow study tools).

I couldn’t have asked for a better learning environment. In Crested Butte, the trailheads and field labs (a.k.a Sick gnar pow slopes) are only a 5-minute drive from the classroom. It’s the next best thing to a hut trip course. Plus, CB finally got a bunch of the white cold stuff that makes our world go round – that’s right, snow. Good old fashioned frozen water that falls from the sky. So we got to tromp around in the backcountry measuring the weather and digging snow pits while the second-largest slide cycle I’ve witnessed boomed, whumphed and rumbled all around us. And, since Colorado pretty much has the sketchiest snow pack this side of the Milky Way, we got to see plenty of scary layers in the snow.

Nor could I have gotten better teachers. Jayson Symons-Jones and Steve Banks, local AMGA-certified guides did a great job. Despite having traveled all over the world to places with simpler snow – Alaska, the Alps, etcetera – they haven’t forgotten how to read a sassy ol’ ready-to-beat-you-down Colorado snow pack. In fact, Jayson’s company, Crested Butte Mountain Guides, is the birth place of the American Institute for Avalanche Information and Education curriculum that has set the standard for avy ed in the U.S. (that’s the country below Canada, with the smaller mountains). Yet another reason to choose CB for avalanche ed.

Jason Symons-Jones, Crested Butte Mountain Guides owner and lead guide, demonstrates a professional-grade hole in the snow.

When the skin track is this deep, you know you're in for the goods. And some avalanche potential. At times the walls were up to my ribs, and a kayak paddle would have been more helpful than poles.

The upside to this new perspective I have on avalanche awareness is that I feel more confident interpreting our snowpack and making safe decisions in the backcountry. And, of course, we got to play with our beacons a little. To any snow geeks out there, I highly recommend it – way more in depth than the Level I. Level I classes seem generally aimed to teach you some rules of thumb, teach you how much you don’t know, and ultimately scare the fecal matter out of you. Level II focuses on when, how and why to bend the rules of thumb based on what’s actually happening in our snowpack. The course also establishes professional observation guidelines, so it’s a great choice for any outdoor professional working in the winter.

The downsside has been that I’m starting to drive my roommate nuts. I have a new 10x loupe that I use for looking at pretty snowflakes, but that’s not all I use it for. Here’s a typical morning exchange these days:

Me, hunched over a pile of dirty dishes at the sink: “Allen, would say these are decomposing BLPs or an SS lens?” I hand him the plate with a centigrade-graduated dial stem thermometer and loupe on it.

He groggily feels about for his coffee bag in the freezer for a moment before noticing me.

“What the…Are you high on Lucky Charms again?”

“You know, decomposing Baked Lasagna Particles, or a Spaghetti Sauce lens? I’m leaning toward the MLPs because the surface temperatures last week averaged in the high 50s, which is rare for our house, and leads me to believe the oven was on a lot because you were baking. Plus, I got a TT-E-SP in the top millimeter. What do you think? Actually, maybe I should take a T20 measurement just to be sure, and do a couple ECTs to see if we can get it to fracture.”

Let’s hear it from any of you snow geeks out there! Where does your obsession lead you? You can tell us in the comment form below.

Would you call that R2-D2, or C3-PO? Maybe OB-1? The class stops to check out one of the many new snow avalanches we saw that week. Squint at the background for a while - it's there.