Free Online Avalanche Course

Hi, welcome along. By understanding a few basic concepts, we hope you will start to understand why avalanches can occur. They are not random events. Through good planning, and looking for clues in the field, we hope these basic concepts will help you to make good decisions, navigate around areas of avalanche danger and avoid their grim consequences.

So ‘What is’ an avalanche? – An avalanche is a moving mass of snow on steep terrain, which has been triggered by adding weight/stress to a weak area of the snowpack.

Below are a couple of video examples of triggered slab avalanches

Okay, so alot is going on there. Let’s look at the different parts of the puzzle.