Valdez Heli-Ski Mountaineering Expedition Update:

Colorado Mountain School, AMGA Ski-mountaineering Guide, Mark Kelly, reports from Valdez, Alaska:

“Things are going very well with many learning opportunities. We have been covering snow study by actually doing real snow study in a demanding environment. We have been learning white-out navigation by actually navigating in a white-out. We are practicing glacial travel by traveling on complicated glacial terrain. We have also covered crevasse rescue in real crevasses (but not real rescues). We have done complicated multi-beacon burial scenarios for avalanche rescue as well as tour planning for this big environment with rapid changes in terrain and visibility.”

“All I can say is, so far so good. We are just waiting for the weather to clear up a bit to do our heli-drop. We have already completed the safety and helicopter briefing, so now we are just waiting for a clear weather window. Until then, we’ll be doing more ski tours. In short… Awesome course so far!”