Theres no craft like snow craft!

Today I headed back up to Lochain with Rory, Chris and Frank on day four of their mountaineering course with Tollymore. There had been a reasonable amount of fresh snow since yesterday, which bumped the avalanche risk up a bit. Bearing this in mind we headed for the edge of the snow slope, which had less accumulations and was much shorter, so offered a safer option. Once on the snow we spent some time digging about, looking at hand shear tests and other quick and practical ways of assessing the snow pack to add to our over all awareness of the avalanche risk.
Adding to the rope work side of things that we covered yesterday, the rest of our day was spent looking at how to safely use a rope to provide security on snow. We looked at bucket seats, buried axes, deadmen and how to use a bollard to get ourselves safely down a slope.



Frank starting work on his bucket seat

Getting to grips with a deadman, its all in the angles!



The team, digging some snow bollards. Everthing in the background was white when we left the bus.