BOISE COUNTY, Idaho — Idaho Parks and Recreation offers dozens of free avalanche safety classes all over the state to teach people how to recognize hazards in avalanche terrain and quickly conduct a rescue if one occurs.
The two-part class starts with a classroom avalanche awareness presentation and ends with a hands-on companion rescue field training.
"It happens. When you enter the backcountry, you need to be safe. You need to understand the role, the concept because you're the first line rescuer. There's no phone call, there is no help — you are the point that's going to conduct that rescue," said Rich Gummersall, with Idaho Parks and Recreation.
He spends his winters teaching people how to save others — caught in avalanches.
"So once they're buried, you have 15 minutes to conduct a successful rescue," said Gummersall.
The hands-on class teaches everything from how to use an avalanche beacon, to proper digging techniques and even what a buried body feels like when you hit it with a probe.
It all starts with getting the right gear.
"Everybody that enters the backcountry needs an avalanche transceiver, needs an avalanche probe and an avalanche shovel. And not only needs it, needs to know how to use it. Really that's the most important part. And it's really not so much how well I can use mine, it's how well you can use yours, to save me," said Gummersall.
"I've never done an avalanche course. Me and my son, we ride together sometimes just the two of us, and we always ride in the backcountry," says Geoff Bauchman, an experienced snowmobiler taking the class for the first time.
Bauchman and his son, Chase, are learning how to properly use their avalanche gear.
"I assumed that I knew kind of what I was doing, and we carry all the gear, but we've never practiced with any of it," says Bauchman.
They got that practice by working with teams to locate avalanche beacons buried in the snow to simulate rescuing a victim — something Bauchman wants both of them to be able to do well.
"My biggest fear is that if I were to get caught in an avalanche, that he wouldn't know what to do to save me. Or vice versa, that if he were to get caught in an avalanche and I was assuming I knew what to do, and I made a mistake, and that mistake cost him his life," says Bauchman.
The National Avalanche Center says there were three avalanche deaths in Idaho during the last winter season, but classes like these could make all the difference.
You can find info on how to attend a free avalanche safety class hosted by Idaho Parks and Recreation here.
