Route Planning and Tour Practice

The Debrief

What?

So What?

Now What?

There, in 3 phrases, is an essential outline of an effective debrief. For many, it is effective to collaborate on a list of comprehensive questions that can lead to understanding of an experience. However, detailed lists often smother creativity and spontaneity. A brief prompt can facilitate thoughts and ideas that may mean nothing or go mo where. Or cause an unexpected 

First developed and presented by Terry Borton, in the book Reach, Touch, Teach.

For many successful experiences, the debrief is challenging. What do you isolate to analyze? Incidents are easy targets to review and cast some analysis. But successful experiences are just as important to   review, although a bit harder. This review process should be about reinforcing the actions and decisions that influenced the success.

This is best done with pen and paper. Commit to archiving your thoughts, since the end product truly commands future actions.

What?

What happened? Give a detailed timeline of events though the course of the experience

This is the brainstorm. Don’t edit or censor any ideas. Even a small detail may hold some relevant significance that will only emerge through later discovery.

Write down the experience as you recall. Consider these prompts: a postcard story; a news headline; tell the story in 5 chapter headings

So what? 

For each piece of What, ascribe some value. Assign a detail about the importance of that piece.

What emotions were experienced? Do not be dissuaded by the power of emotions to assign value to experiences. Name an emotion you experienced? 

Why were things brought up seemingly relevant or important?

Now What?

Based on what struck you through brainstorming and assigning values, what can you do moving forward? Give yourself some actions in direct connection with the So What’s. It may be "do the exact same thing". That's still a commitment.

Stability Tests

To begin with: tests conducted on the snow in dug pits serve as one component of a complex system of information. By the time you are digging a pit on tour, you should already have a decent theory of instability. The use of these tests is to further collect information towards proving your theory of instability, but does not constitute a “Go/No-Go” decision.

That is very important: they do not serve as the sole decider on whether to ride or not. 

We use the information collected from these various tests to provide further insight into the instabilities that exist in the snow pack. Both their probability and their level of consequence.

Unfortunately, for novices, the development of effective testing takes time and experience. The presentation of these skills in a level 1 course is to establish the practice that can be sustained over a person’s career of experiencing the wintry backcountry.

In other words, this must be consistently practiced in order to  develop any level of proficiency. Level One students do not walk away from a course strongly adept at conducting these tests. Rather, they walk away with the foundation of knowledge and skills that must be reinforced through extensive practice.

With all that, this is our recommended progression of a pit test:

The Card Test:

The HandHardness Test

The Shovel Shear Test

The Compression Test

The Extended Column Test 

The Rutschblock Test