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Contact
Mark Herbick
YPO Chair
mHerbick@aol.com

Snowbird Expeditions Winter 2007
The Course

Attendees will become proficient in the following:

Skills to be Mastered:
Efficient travel in a winter alpine environment. This includes both ascent and descent. Specific skills you will work on with your guide will be: Ice Climbing, Snowshoe, Telemark, AT, Split Board and trail breaking techniques. Crampon skills including ladder crossing and ladder climbing. Extensive fixed rope practice for both ascent and descent using ascenders and various rope and equipment techniques. Rappelling with and without skis. Crevasse rescue, snow caves, and other survival techniques.

The technique behind proper dressing:
The right way to layer, maintaining a constant skin temperature, water and moisture vapor transmission rates, waterproof vs. breathable, the danger of sweat, geographic and seasonal impacts on dress, and technical gear from socks to hats.

Mixed terrain ascent and descent:
Climbing skins, alpine touring equipment, split board, snowshoes, boot packing, crampons, ice axe, and self arrest.

Backpacks:
Personal sizing, what to carry, load sizing and placement, waterproofing, variations in backpacks, and requisite features.

Rescue:
Shovel, locator, probe, first aid, self rescue, partner rescue, organized rescue, hasty search, and organizational structure.

Locators:
From analog to digital, from one antenna to three, single burial to multiple burials, scenario-specific practice with each in the United States’ first fully-automated rescue training center.

First Aid:
Basic wilderness medical protocols – injury management, diagnosis, treatment, packaging, radio procedures and rescue scenarios, and expedition-specific medical kits.

Mountain Awareness:
Vocabulary, topographical map reading, terrain selection, destination choices, GPS, route choices, safe travel, hazards both natural and climber, snow pack evaluation, helicopter landing zones, weather, signs of instability, how to travel in avalanche terrain, islands of safety, and safe zones.

Teamwork:
The critical elements of teamwork that often determine an expeditions' success or failure, leadership, roles, planning and group dynamics.

How to Summit:
Putting it all together.

Summits that should be within your reach after this course would include:
Mt. McKinley, Mt. Rainier, Mt. Kilimanjaro, Mt. Shasta, and Island Peak