Canadian Avalanche Association (CAA) Pro Level 1 Course in Japan Welcome once again to the Back Country Board Room. Today we have an exciting event that happened just earlier in the season to report on - the first Canadian Avalanche Association (CAA) Pro Level 1 Course to take place in Japan.

Welcome once again to the Back Country Board Room. Today we have an exciting event that happened just earlier in the season to report on - the first Canadian Avalanche Association (CAA) Pro Level 1 Course to take place in Japan. This was an event long awaited by professionals in the industry organized by the newly formed Japan Avalanche Network, known as JAN, in cooperation with the CAA.

JAN has been working hard since it's creation in 2000, by Mr. Azusa Degawa, towards avalanche safety and awareness in Japan. First with the translation of Bruce Jamisons text, 'Free Riding in Avalanche Terrain' and other awareness publications into Japanese, support of Recreational Awareness Courses (RAC) and now the CAA Level 1 course in Hakuba, Nagano. This course was a great success and will hopefully become an annual event here in Japan.

The Ski Operations Level 1 Course has been running in Canada now for almost three decades and has become the official standard in Canada and a standard setter for avalanche programs around the world. The Canadian standards have been used to establish the New Zealand Avalanche Association and now JAN has set up it's Non Profit Organization also based on the CAA regulations.

So what made this course so special? Well, it was first, a gathering of winter mountain professionals from all over Japan to learn about avalanche safety and stability forecasting skills; second, it was a start to having a set of internationally recognized avalanche safety standards and snow pack recording procedures in Japan; and third a chance for the Japanese industry to meet and learn from three very experienced and talented Instructors from Canada, not to mention the wealth of experience put into creating this course by the many others who have dedicated a great portion of there professional careers into research and development of this course.

My involvement in the course started with guiding the three instructors from Canada, Randy Stevens, Nic Seaton and John Buffery around the areas that the course would take place. The first day that we went out into the backcountry we had about a meter of powder on a previous sun crust and were cautious of the avalanche danger, loud whumping sounds from the collapse of the deep week layer made us even more weary. We crossed slopes using adequate spacing and followed the safest routes through the trees for ascending to our goal of the upper ridge. We prepared for the promise of great snow on the decent. Skiing one at a time and stopping in safe places we made some fantastic turns. Turns that I over heard one of the instructors saying were the best he could remember. It truly was one of those awesome days in the Japan Alps and a great start to the week long course.

The first two days were spent in the seminar room with lectures given by the three instructors and translated by Yukinori Saotome, Yasuhiro Arimoto and myself. Content consisted of avalanche mechanics & dynamics, avalanche terrain assessment, introducing students to the CAA field book & the stability evaluation check list, case studies, class discussions, videos, slides and a fascinating presentation on Japanese weather patterns by Mr. Michihiko Tonouchi, Manager and Forecaster for the Japan Weather Association. The afternoons were spent doing demonstration snow profiles, weather taking procedures, beacon practice and self-rescue procedures.

By day three the students and the instructors were longing to get out of the stuffy classroom and into the mountains. So after the daily weather forecast it was on to the shuttle to Tsugaike Kogen Resort to ride the Gondola to the top. Skins and snow shoes were put on and beacons checked before the climb into the backcountry. Because of weather and avalanche concerns the three groups of 6 students, instructor and translator did not get too far from the ski field, yet accomplished all of the planned exercises; group management, terrain assessment, student snow profiles and stability tests, Reuch block test and field weather taking. Once back and to the bottom safely it was back on the shuttle and back to the Sierra Resort Hakuba, where the in class sessions were done, for weather observations at the weather plot that was created only days earlier out of the ingenuity of the instructors.

The day finished by plotting the days snow profile results and completing a snow stability evaluation checklist. This is just that, a checklist to assess the present stability of the mountain snow pack in the immediate area from observations made that day in the field. This checklist also helps assist in a forecast of stability for the next day when combined with the weather forecast. Classes were finished at 7:00pm with everyone ready for dinner, bath and a good nights sleep.

Days 4 and 5 were spent much as day three with the three groups traveling separately into different local terrain yet working more on route finding and group management skills as well as making slope stability evaluations by using the procedures learned in the first three days. Day 5 allowed each group to travel further a field as the weather improved and the snow pack stabilized. All groups got some long awaited and well deserved powder turns at the end of this day making the last field day a great success.

There were a few things during the course that surprised me. One major surprise was the lack of search and rescue sense seen on day 4 during a simple rescue scenario set up instructor Nic Seaton. I know that he too was very struck by the results of this scenario, especially because it was done by a group of mostly guides. The beacon work was very fast, but the precautions to be taken were not thought out and the lack of system used to search for the non beacon-wearing victims was discouraging. Another thing, that is perhaps cultural, was the lack of interaction between students and with the instructors. This could have also been a language barrier, in the case of student to instructor interaction, yet was unfortunate as the students had a huge well of knowledge at there disposal if they would have been more participatory and inquisitive. In future courses it may be wise to leave little to assumption and provide detailed step-by-step how to lectures and field demonstrations. One main reason for confusion on this course was because not many of the students had participated in a RAC course, which is a prerequisite in Canada. The students here may have taken part in another seminar, yet the procedures and teaching styles are very different between Japan and Canada.

The final two days were the exam days both written and field. The field exam started with each student doing their own snow profile, a total of 18 profiles is definitely a sight to see. The range was great, from some of the most well crafted pits I'd ever seen, by one of my RAC students, to very thoughtlessly crafted and inadequate profiles. Yet on the whole they were at par with Canadian students.

The afternoon session consisted of the beacon test and weather taking examinations. The student is allotted a total of 5 minutes to find two beacons with in a 35 x 35 meter area. The fastest times were around 2 minutes and unfortunately one of the students did not pass this mandatory portion of the course which was very hard for the instructors to see as they truly want all participants to pass the course. The weather-taking component went very smoothly and all participants did well in this part of the exam. The unfortunate thing is that there are very few places in Japan, common place at most other international ski hills and highways study plots, where these type of weather stations are set up to give twice daily weather observations, which will not allow for students to further practice this.

The last day was the written exam and the final lectures by the instructors on terrain, organized rescue (which is not tested) and a very sad but enlightening case study and discussion presented by John Buffery of an avalanche rescue that he was involved in. This case study left the class a sense of challenge and commitment to try to make the winter mountains a safer place through their participation in avalanche awareness, forecasting, control and in the case of an accident, rescue.

The Japanese mountain community and the newly formed JAN have embarked on a long and turbulent road to their common goals of - increased avalanche awareness, professional level avalanche seminars and courses and the development of a reliable and respected community of avalanche forecasters to provide avalanche bulletins for the winter mountain communities of Japan.