What is an AIARE 2?

During your AIARE 1 course, you learned The AIARE Risk Management Framework, a process designed to help you identify and manage backcountry hazards and to intentionally learn from your experience. The emphasis of the AIARE 1 is to be able to use The AIARE Framework no matter your level of backcountry experience. The process is designed to enable you to choose terrain that is matched to your experience and the hazard.

The AIARE 2 is also grounded in The AIARE Framework. The objective of this course is to learn how to manage uncertainty in avalanche terrain by applying The AIARE Framework to unfamiliar situations while receiving coaching from your Instructors. This course is designed to give you tools to identify more options of where to go and direct your learning through targeting uncertainty.

Reducing uncertainty is a way to influence how terrain choice is matched to the conditions and the group. Being able to reduce uncertainty with the group or increase an understanding of the conditions can open up terrain options. Having more low uncertainty terrain options means increasing the likelihood of being able to make a plan that matches the group and conditions combination of any given day.

AIARE 2 Uncertainty Tools

While the idea of uncertainty and its direct relationship to risk is introduced in the AIARE 1, the AIARE 2 hones in on specific ways for you to develop a skill-set to help you reduce uncertainty. As the AIARE 2 course progresses, you will have the opportunity to develop and refine the skills you learned on your AIARE 1 course by applying them in new situations with regards to group dynamics, current conditions, or terrain. You can think about this progression as developing your AIARE 2 “tools to target uncertainty.” You will see this phrase throughout the AIARE 2 Online Learning.

The goal of this course isn’t to teach you how to ride big steep lines or make professional-level snowpack observations. This course will however give you the tools to humbly assess if the group, conditions, hazard, are conducive to the objectives you have your sights set on.

This course provides you

• a skillset to explore new areas.

• the ability to develop your own informed opinion about snowpack conditions.

• a stronger ability to communicate openly.

• the skills to facilitate consensus-based decisions in the backcountry.

Your AIARE 2 Course

This season, AIARE 2 courses will all look a little different depending on where they are being offered. Self-paced online learning and study through this website and using the AIARE Student Manual, video or classroom sessions with an instructor, Facebook groups and other online forums are all modes that may be employed to ensure you have the information you need build your skillset and develop tools for managing uncertainty.

All AIARE courses are united by a field component. AIARE 1 and 2 courses spend at least two days in the field applying the tools you learn in the classroom (virtually or in-person) or through self-paced online learning. One-day rescue courses typically spend the whole day in the field practicing rescue skills.

Regardless of the exact mode of your course, use this website as a tool to prepare for your course and as a reference to keep your skills sharp.

Avalanche education is a process

By taking this course, you are taking the first step to develop the skills to safely gain experience and manage your risk.

While the AIARE 2 is the third course in AIARE’s 7-day Decision Making in Avalanche Terrain curriculum, it is not the final stop for learning about avalanches. The program is intended to provide the foundation for gaining backcountry experience. Meaning it is just meant to be the start.

Traveling in the backcountry is committing to a lifelong apprenticeship in the mountains. A single course or educational experience is never going to immediately give you the skills needed to tackle the most ambitious outing on your bucket list. This is why The AIARE Framework is both a risk management process and a process to learn from your experiences. Continue to revisit our stream of avalanche education, in particular the Avalanche Rescue and the AIARE 2 to keep current and to continue to challenge yourself to grow and learn more.