Great suggestion Peter, I am hoping to build on my AST 1and AST 2 courses next winter with the CAA level 1. Who did you take it with, the CAA or a guiding outfit? Also, did you find it difficult after taking the AST 2? as that has been two years ago for me.

Thanks for the advice and knoweldge.

I believe it is still only offered through the CAA.  I would HIGHLY recommend doing it at a backcountry lodge.  A little more expensive but a way better experience.

PowderPIG said:

Great suggestion Peter, I am hoping to build on my AST 1and AST 2 courses next winter with the CAA level 1. Who did you take it with, the CAA or a guiding outfit? Also, did you find it difficult after taking the AST 2? as that has been two years ago for me.

Thanks for the advice and knoweldge.

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You should do fine as you will be taught the specific info you will need to know. Primary focus of the course is "observation", eg. weather obs (both study plot and field), snow profiles (and all that it entails), route finding, documentation, and much much more. You will be tested on a 2 victim (beacon) search, so I would say that is the only commonality (if I can say) with the ASTs and route finding, but that all depends on who taught your AST II and what they covered, I guess.

Courses are offered through CAA in a variety of locations (mine was at Lake Louise), but at a hut would have been great (though I hear much harder as you do a lot more skiing/climbing ).

Lemme know if you have any additional questions.

P

Maybe I should share my Level 1 experience.

I did the Lake Louise course a year ago and I don't recommend that course to any friend. I do recommend the Level 1 course, but I tell everyone to save up and do it at a backcountry lodge. I'm sure it would be worth it.

The way they had the course set up is roughly half day classroom theory and half day field. Because you have lots of logistics, especially driving to various places and waiting for people, go to the hill sometimes and wait for tickets, extremely slow pace on the skintrack, etc. I ended up with less than adequate time to really grasp well the field work doing snowpits and snow tests. The day I learned the most was the day of the final field exam. That was the only time the instructor took plenty of time to make sure I made 100% correct observations.

At a backcountry lodge there is none of that waste of time. The classroom time will stay the same but all the saved up time will make for touring out to a better variety of places to make snowpack obs/tests and more 1 on 1 time with the instructors.

Expect big groups. I think there were 24 people taking the course, with 3 instructors. When touring to somewhere, that was 3 groups of 8 slow moving to places. We had a mix of skiers and splitboarders, and people that weren't very efficient on the uptrack. We skinned up an average of 100m vertical per day if I remember well.

I hear what you are saying JF, but schedules don't always synch up to allow some to register for a hut based course.... 3 instructors?! I thought they have a 6:1 ratio, i.e., 4 instructors for the group of 24 (we had 4)... Maybe that has changed...

I didn't mind the lack of ski touring, actually, as the touring wasn't what I was interested in, it was the general knowledge, practical skills (digging pits, etc.)... On the flip side, I have heard that on the hut based courses you can climb for up to 2 hr + and then have to dig a series of pits, etc.

Anyway, the important side of this discussion, is the knowledge that one will gain by taking a course like this!! And you get out of it what you put in!!

P

Double post