Nordic Skiing Safety Tips

These tips are sponsored by these national and international sponsors:    Lowrance GPS, Polar AXN, Tracker Avalanche Beacons, and G3 Avalanche Gear                

Also if you are a manufacturer/distributor of a safety product that nordic skiers might use then let me know.  Contact me at: knicol@swgc.mun.ca

My qualifications include: Level 4 CANSI Trail Instructor, Level 3 CANSI Telemark Instructor, Level 3 CSIA Alpine Instructor and Level 2 CAA ( Canadian Avalanche Assoc. Certification). At the present time I hold the highest overall CANSI certification in Canada. I have taught in the largest Masters Racing Camps in Canada at Silver Star, B.C. and have helped thousands of skiers from beginner to expert improve their nordic skiing. As well I have been on 4 Canadian INTERSKI Nordic Skiing Demo Teams and run the Winter Outdoor Pursuits Programme at SWGC.  Check out the Links above to find CANSI's, INTERSKI's  and related WEB sites.

NOTE: The MPEG videos are fairly large, and are best viewed on computers on campus.  The MPEG video may appear to be choppy if watching from home. If you would like to watch the video on your home machine, try watching the WMV version.

Lowrance has produced a great new GPS for nordic skiers. The H20 is waterproof and can be ordered with a set of "Freedom Maps" of your area. These 'topo' maps cover large areas-for instance, mine covers all of Newfoundland and Labrador, PEI, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick--all on a chip the size of a dime. The zoom function is very impressive and allows you to see the entire region you plan to ski across as well as the corner of the lake you are presently camped at. It is WAAS enabled which means it is accurate to up to 3 meters. I took it on a recent sea kayak trip to Labrador and found it very easy to use.  It uses 2 AA cells and these last for up to 12 hours. For more information contact: www.lowrancecanada.com

Polar AXN 500

This amazing watch monitors altitude, barometric pressure, acts as a compass and is also a heart rate monitor. I have been testing it over the past few weeks and find it an very useful devise for predicting weather changes and checking elevation on ski trips. For those people who want to monitor heart rate for training purposes then this also works well for this. This watch is one in a series of Polar AXN and is ideal for ski touring, hiking , trekking, sea kayaking and all around outdoor activities. The 700 is the high end version and does just about everything but get you up the mountain. The AXN 300 is great for snow sports and includes a slope counter.  For more information contact Polar at: www.polar.fi

Cutting a Rutschblock is an impressive way to test snow stability. But it can be time consuming since you need to cut such a large block of snow. I have used the G3 Rutschblock Cord for 2 years and find that it does a great job as long as the snow is not too firm (ie. minimal ice layers). Here some of our students are cutting a rutschblock using the 2 probes as guides. You can faintly see the cord stretched between the probes and as the students saw it back and forth it cuts through the snow leaving an unsupported block to test. For more info. check out-www.genuineguidegear.com 

We have been using this handy devise in our Outdoor Pursuits Classes at Memorial University for the last few years and it not only measures a large variety of weather variables but also tracks them over time. We use the barometric pressure function to watch as storms pass overhead and find the wind chill function especially useful in our windy Newfoundland environment. I find it useful for our avalanche courses that we run and it is also useful for telling us what surface snow temperature is for ski waxing. for more information contact Kestrel 4000.

This book is hot off the presses - released in early 2005. If you travel in the mountains then understanding mountain weather is crucial. The book is useful is all seasons since there are chapters on lighting as well as snow storms and avalanches. I liked Jeff Renner's treatment of wind since it is such a big factor our adventures in the mountains. There is extensive information on weather patterns on a region by region basis but unfortunately some Canadian Provinces get little coverage. Jeff is a broadcast meteorologist so knows what he is talking about. This book is available from The Mountaineers Books.

This is a great book about avalanches. Bruce Tremper is an avalanche specialist and it shows. The book is very thorough and well written. The book is full of sketches and black and white photos and covers a wide variety of mountain environments. The 10 chapters cover what you might expect and include an interesting chapter on the all important human dimension. I really liked his ideas on thinking about the whole mountain and his sketches in the chapter on stability are very useful for considering how spatial variability may creep into snow assessment decisions. The book is published by The Mountaineers Books.

When I wanted to introduce our students to avalanche beacons, it was important that they be   easy to use. Newfoundland isn't always associated with avalanches, but they do occur and have killed dozens of people over the years. In the avalanche courses that I teach we have tested the Tracker against other makes and it usually comes out on top in terms of time taken to find the buried transceiver. The directional display really helps as does the distance indicator. For more information on avalanches in Newfoundland see that section of this web site. Also for anyone interested in learning more about avalanches then contact me for information about when the next Recreational Avalanche Course will be held. For more information on the Tracker DTS contact: www.bcaccess.com

The G3 Bone Saw is one of the latest items to be included in the G3 stable of innovative avalanche gear. This saw has a built in snow crystal grid so that you can do snow crystal analysis as well as cut snow, ice and even wood with this saw (photo 1).  It comes with 2 red straps for easy extension to shovels or probes. (photo 2). I  have used it with our RAC classes this winter (2005) and found that it did a good job cutting rutschblocks in the numerous ice crust layers we had this winter in Newfoundland.  It sliced through ice layers that the G3 Rutschblock cord would never get through. For more information on the bone saw contact: www.genuineguidegear.com