Winter Ops

Another phase down. That makes 3 so far since Ground Ops doesn't count since we're technically not done it yet. This phase was mostly geared towards moving in the backcountry, as well as identifying avalanche probability areas and avalanche rescue. This training includes downhill skiing, alpine touring skiing, winter living in a camp setting (vice survival setting as on selection), avalanche skills training and avalanche rescue. The brunt of the course was geared toward the avalanche skills training course. We can now dig snow profiles and identify strong temperature gradients which cause faceting (this is bad), and can conduct a series of tests to more accurately assess the weak layers in the snow pack and and what level they will fail at. We also did a lot of training with avalanche rescues using the 3 minimum things you should carry into the backcountry, those being a shovel, probe and, transceiver. Phil Friolet was the fastest with a time of 1:17. So in just over a minute he was able to locate a casualty and dig them out in an area about 25m wide and 50m long. Everyone was well under the max of 5 minutes which is reassuring since you typically have 15-20 mintues assuming you don't carry any gucci shit that will prolong your survival time.

For myself the best part of it was the camp routine stuff. Having come from the navy I had never spent anytime in the field let alone in the field during winter. So to see how things should be or how they could potentially be done was a good learning experience for me. The highlight for myself was getting to sleep in a quinzhee which is basically a snow cave. The instructors said "who wants to sleep in a quinzhee?" I raised my hand but at the same time was thinking 'what the fuck is a quinzhee?' Anyway we built it by digging down, putting everyone's rucksacks in the middle as to reduce the amount of snow we would have to dig out and piling a shitload of snow on top and packing it down. We kind of over did it since in the end the walls were about a metre thick when they really only need to be 30cm. Regardless I was fucking cooking inside of that thing. I started out with long underwear top and bottom, fleece top and bottom and a toque inside my dual layer sleeping bag. Within an hour I was just down to the long underwear, no toque and my head and one arm were out of the sleeping bag. A good confidence builder for me to see how well snow insulates.

Anyway that's another phase down and next up is the Arctic phase. It is a survival course and as such they don't tell us anyhing except what to bring. Everything else is about reacting. One thing I do know is that it's going to be fucking cold. This is a picture of the 3 of us who didn't puss out and sleep in tents.