General Avalanche Awareness Course Details

Registration - Flowchart, Objectives and Descriptions - Additional Information

This basic awareness course is a subset of what our full Level 1 course includes. It is intended for people who recreate outdoors in winter but want to know enough to just avoid avalanche terrain as much as possible. Snowshoers, cross-country skiers, hikers, some snowmobilers, and others often fall into this category. This is in contrast to backcountry skiers and ski mountaineers, snowmobilers who highmark, and others who intentionally travel in avalanche terrain and want to do so as safely as possible. These people should take a Level 1 course, but this short awareness version can serve as an introduction to what is covered in Level 1 and how the online platform works. Upon completion of this course you will be eligible for a discount on either the full Level 1 course or the Climbers course.

You can read the objectives for each module by clicking on its box in the flowchart. The links on the right side will go to more complete module descriptions. The way this course is delivered means that you will get what is described, completely. There is no variation due to different locations or instructors or other factors.

Flowchart Module 1 Objectives Module 2 Objectives Module 3 Objectives Module 4 Objectives

Full Module Descriptions:

  1. Introduction

  2. Objective Factors

  3. Human Factors

  4. Risk Management

Additional Information

There are online quizzes included in this Awareness course but they are primarily for self-assessment as well as serving as part of the learning process. In the Level 1 course each quiz has a minimum score that is required to continue, that is not the case here. (In the Level 1 there are also a few quizzes that are submitted and not auto-graded online.) You can choose to take any quiz as many times as you would like.

There is a workbook for this course in pdf format which is just supplementary. There are copies of all diagrams and graphics from the online work so that students will have copies of those things to keep if they wish. In some sections there are case studies, and sometimes there is a bit of material presented via workbook pages rather than online. The workbook is broken up into pieces with the appropriate pages included in the right modules or sections throughout the Learning Path. It is possible to print these as they are encountered for those that want a hard copy, when you finish the course you will have a complete workbook this way. It is not available directly, or in print.