With many of you considering hitting the slopes across Europe and North America this ski season, a group of ski professionals have got together to educate and inform to improve your safety.
Mountain Awareness (
http://www.mountainawareness.com/) aims to make safety information related to skiing and snowboarding accessible, ultimately improving risk assessment and leading to you making safer decisions.
The group has produced a DVD, which aims to highlight the different dangers and safety issues you should keep at the forefront of your mind if you venture off piste this winter.
Split into two sections, the DVD addresses snow and avalanche awareness as well as search and rescue, detailing issues such as why, when and where avalanches take place and how to use search and rescue equipment, among others.
Mountain Awareness also hosts a number of courses for skiers and boarders aimed at all levels of experience and abilities.
Level one of the course is entitled Venturing Off Piste and is an introductory or refresher course that covers the basics, including transceiver use. Level two, A Safer Way to Freeride covers issues such as slope identification, snow assessment, multiple burial search and rescue, while level three, Mountain Safety, covers more in-depth areas for the big mountain freerider.
With half of all completely buried avalanche victims dying within the first 25 minutes of being buried and 95 per cent dying within the first two hours, mountain and off-piste safety is off utmost importance.
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