Avalanche Season does not end when ski season ends! Every year there are close calls and fatalities in spring, usually involving mountaineering (with or without skis) and alpine climbing.
Spring Mountaineering and Climbing Course
The definitive source for learning specifically about spring avalanche conditions is in our Climbing and Mountaineering Online Avalanche Course in the Avalanche Institute. This is focused especially on spring and is shorter and more concise than our complete Level 1. The description includes complete details on the course - objectives, organization, approach, etc. There is also an Avalanche Institute avalanche course playlist on youtube which reviews each module.
Quizzes
Our quiz section has a few quizzes on spring conditions. As of spring 2023 the main "Current Quiz" is on spring conditions and has questions selected from our course. (This requires logging in either as a member or with an email address which is on our list.) We are also working on a new type of exercise - Quandaries.
There is also an older style Spring Avalanche Conditions Quiz available to anyone, no membership or list subscription required.
Web Pages
There is a Colorado Firstrax Spring Avalanche page which we rescued from archives. (The original Firstrax website is long since defunct as far as we know.)
The legacy website mountain-guiding.com had a couple pages on spring and summer avalanche issues. We have archived copies here:
Incident Lists
Lists of spring and summer avalanche incidents in our database. Access to the actual reports requires a membership but the static list pages are public. You can also make your own search if you are a member. Note that global searching (as opposed to US only) will include winter incidents in the southern hemisphere if you do your own search. These have been removed from the static global listing.
- A static list of recreational spring incidents in the US from our database.
- A static list of global recreational spring incidents from our database.
- Spring Search Page - This page allows you to search our database for all incidents between two dates in spring. You can begin with any date after April 1 and end with any date before September 30. (We included summer but after mid-July 5 there are few if any in the northern hemisphere. You will pick up some globally, and winter incidents from the southern hemisphere will be included.) This is an improved version of what we used to generate the static lists above.
