For my STEP project, I travelled out to Utah to do an AIARE 1 class administered by Red River adventure guides. The class consisted of an online course lasting about four hours and three class days. The first class was administered on zoom and the subsequent class days took place outdoors in the Wasatch wilderness as field days. The field days consisted of learning everything from avalanche rescue techniques to decision making strategies in the wilderness.
Over the course of this class, I gained more knowledge about backcountry decision-making and avalanches than I thought I would learn in many seasons skiing in the backcountry. The AIARE 1 decision making framework was something that I became very familiar with, and it changed how I view teamwork in the backcountry. I now understand how to make decisions that involve risk when there exist unknowns to safety. My outlook for how I want to progress in the backcountry and interact with others in the backcountry has developed to be more careful. My outlook is now one that is focused on teamwork interaction with others so that everybody can be elevated, and decisions are not rushed or poorly thought out. Previously, I had an outlook that weighted the most experienced person in a group as having the final say in decision making when possibly life-threatening risk was involved. Now I see everybody in a group as having a say because discounting other people’s decision-making processes, risk tolerance, and general mental state can easily lead to dangerous situations. Over the course of the class, I learned that I was very accustomed to making decisions for a group and pressuring others to follow, or unconditionally following the decisions of another person I deem to be the leader. The class taught me how to break that habit and showed me how to make positive progress in decision-making processes when in a team.
Over the course of the class, I had many interactions with my instructors and my classmates that helped me develop and transform my decision-making process and outlook. Jake and Victoria, the course instructors, were extremely knowledgeable in all things avalanches, skiing, and general backcountry protocol. They had my classmates and I go through avalanche rescue scenarios to practice using our safety equipment. One of the key things that Jake and Victoria emphasize is how stressful that situation is and that when your mind and body get flooded with adrenaline from the stressful situation your decision-making will revert to your base, instinctive knowledge. I did not understand this at first but when I did a practice scenario for the first time, I felt that stress. Since I had no prior knowledge of how to perform an avalanche rescue, I messed up the procedure quite a bit. The procedure exists to provide an optimized and efficient framework for the rescue, so my frantic fumbling took away from that efficiency. I did a second scenario after having received constructive criticism and pointers from Jake. The second scenario went a lot smoother for me and I performed an efficient rescue. I still felt the stress of the scenario, but my actions felt more thought out because my base knowledge of avalanche rescues had increased.
The second day of the class was administered over the course of backcountry ski tour. Jake instructed the group I was in on various backcountry topics over the course of the tour and made sure the experience felt like tour we might do on our own in the future. Over the course of this tour, my group and I constantly asked him questions about the terrain we were in and how to identify different aspects of avalanche terrain. What really struck me about his answers was how he finished them. He would always answer our question in an extremely informative way but he would go further by citing multiple resources we could use to learn more and predict. These interactions with Jake helped me break down my preconception of some people being all-knowing experts. All parties have different, important perspectives that can aide in the avalanche terrain decision-making process. Nobody knows everything so travelling with others allows more brains and more perspectives to work together to solve the hyper-complex problems of travelling in avalanche terrain.
My classmates played a crucial part in my enjoyment of the class and what I got out of it. I only knew one person in my group going into the class, leaving Jake and two other group members. Since the structure of the class prioritized teamwork and discussion, I was forced to come out of my shell to participate. This ultimately helped me and made the class very informative because of my engagement. My classmates were experienced in the backcountry and extremely welcoming of me. They gave me advice on uphill travel and urged me to speak up. In exchange I also urged them to speak up when they thought it necessary. Overall, the class helped me engage in teamwork in a setting I was not totally familiar with.
This class ultimately proved to be the gateway into the backcountry that I wanted it to be. It showed me all the things I still need to learn and how to make decisions with a lack of information. One of the things the class emphasized was the dunning-kruger effect and getting over the “peak of Mt. Stupid.” The class got me over that peak and put me into the realm of knowing what I don’t know, which is much better for identifying risk and risk tolerance. The backcountry is dangerous so I want to spread the knowledge I gained to others so they can make safer decisions. As the gear manager and regular trip leader of The Mountaineers at The Ohio State University, I regularly am out in the backcountry with others. The decision-making and teamwork aspect was of ambiguous direction in my previous trips, resulting in me making all the decisions. I will be adapting the decision-making framework I learned from this class to my mountaineers trips so that others can learn the framework and the club as a whole can make safer decisions. There was a void of experience in backcountry safety and avalanche knowledge before, so I am excited to bring this knowledge to this club and allow more people to find enjoyment in the backcountry, safely.
