Poco Loco Staff Training.

 

Team Poco Loco.

Poco Loco is the iconic burger bar on the Rue du Dr Paccard in Chamonix. Squashed into an unfeasibly narrow gap in the main street it produces its famous burgers.  

The reason it is so successful is probably for many reasons, but one of the key factors is that people like working there.   Poco Loco is smart too, because it has a house where the staff  can stay for a modest rent.  

Thus Poco Loco, by providing dedicated accommodation has circumnaviagted the enternal problem of all alpine businesses based in ski resorts : That is the workers can't afford to live in the resorts, which in turn means the restaurents  bars etc can't find the staff.  

The staff are motivated young people, many, who are exploring the world and this being Chamonix are here to ski and to ski off-piste.  This is where I come into the picture because this year and last year I have run a days training for the staff roughly along the lines of "How to avoid getting avalanched while having a good time." 

The unintended consequence of days like these is that if they are not delivered carefully they can have the effect of " Giving people enough information to be dangerous..." 

A lot of avalanche courses concentrate very heavily on teaching avalanche rescue techniques with heavy  emphasis on extracting the casualty as quickly as possible.  While this is undeniably vitally important, my starting point puts the emphasis more on not getting avalanched in the first place.

So my group of highly motivated skiers and snowboarders, Olive Scarlett Merryn Quentin Gemma and Grace joined me at Le Tour. 

Everyone skied with a backpack, shovel and probe plus transceiver.  We started by looking at the signage provided by the resort.  The avalanche forecast for the day.  It was two, on a scale of five.  I explained that although it is possible to be caught in an avalanche at level two it is very unlikely. 

yellow flag risk level 2

 The issue with level three is that it is going to provide the best off-piste skiing but also at a hightened chance of being caught in an avalanche. 

On a level four day I suggested it was best to not ski off-piste.  Level 5 you did not need to worry about because the resort will  be closed as will a lot of roads.

We talked about the signage at the pistes - Skiing either side of the poles was fine, while ducking under a rope meant there was potentially significantly more challenges and if there is netting, then you should probably not try and climb through it or over it.

Probably best to not climb through..

My aim was to accept that the team were there to ski off-piste- but to make sure they knew what they were getting into. After all there are so many people rescued who claim "They didn't' know."

Next there was an explanation of what causes an avalanche.  It's not snow.  But snow plus wind. With their new found knowledge the group could then see for themselves natures signage.  There are many clues.

We skied some good north facing snow, while also talking about how to organise the group, so that if by chance some one was caught in an avalanche, then the whole group wasn't caught in the same slide.  I.e ski from point of safety to point of safety one at a time..

We looked at how to calculate slope angles, quickly, - [Generally if you can stay away from slopes of more than 30 degrees in marginal conditions then you will be safer.]

On our next run we started by throwing the skis over the shoulder and hiking up to the top of the Tete du Balme.   We dug some snow profiles to see how wind slab is formed, plus how to identify the weak layers

Looking at snow profiles

After which we skied down some challanging remote off-piste, putting what we had learned into practise.

The second key part of the day was to look at what happens if all of the above does not stop you from getting avalanched,or if you come across another group who have been avalanched. 

Above :If avalanched here is a template of what to do first.

So we did full avalanche transceiver searches, plus how to probe, how to shovel, what to do if you are the person caught,

Above :If you are caught you could try this?

Plus loads of other small details like which are the best Apps to have on your phone all which could make the difference between a sucssesful rescue and one that is not.  Hopefully everyone went away wanting to learn more because it is like a lot of new subjects: The more you learn the more you realise what you dont know!