Intermediate Snowshoeing

The Intermediate Snowshoeing course is designed for adventurers who want to gain the skills and experience to handle more challenging snowshoe routes and terrain. Whether it's a winter backcountry vista, alpine frozen lake, or climb to the summit of a mountain, this course will take snowshoeing to the next level.

The curriculum and required co-requisites will cover material needed to travel safely and survive in the winter backcountry. Topics include winter equipment, clothing, proper use of an ice axe, self-belay and self-arrest skills, avalanche awareness including terrain and snow pack evaluation, use of beacons and companion rescue, navigation, winter route finding, winter first aid, incident response and emergency snow shelters.

Current students, after successful completion of the field trip, and graduates of the Intermediate Snowshoeing course are eligible to participate on Intermediate level snowshoe trips. Students may take two years to complete all requirements of the course, if they choose. This is definitely a more aggressively approached course, and winter conditions and destinations warrant this rigor, but as in all Mountaineers activities, safety is ALWAYS paramount.

Prerequisites

Basic Snowshoeing (or equivalent); also open to graduates of Alpine Scrambling or Basic Climbing.

Fitness Requirements

Participants should be in good cardiovascular shape. The more challenging, steeper routes and terrain of Intermediate snowshoe trips require a greater level of fitness than Basic snowshoe trips.

Graduation Requirements

• 1 classroom session
• 1 all-day skills field trip
• 2 regularly scheduled Mountaineers Intermediate snowshoe trips
• Completion of a Stewardship activity
• Completion of separate Navigation and Wilderness First Aid courses
• Completion of eLearning Low Impact Recreation course

Registration for this course will enroll you in the classroom session, the field trip, and a backup field trip date. The backup field trip date will only be run if the original field trip is canceled due to weather conditions.