Powder capital

---

Day one dawned, and after wishing the aussies in the lodge a good day I was whisked away to meet the rest for avalanche training. Despite the jetlag I took copious notes, and then it was time for the transeiver hunt. It's deceptively difficult, and on flat ground it was taking us at least 5 minutes to find the box; that's pretty frightening as 93% of people don't survive beyond 15 minutes, and we'd still have to get to the avalanche site in the real thing! In the afternoon we headed up the mountain to go digging.. We were each given a shovel and told to dig a vertical face in the snow so that we could check the layers, and distinguish the good and bad types of snow. It was about this time that a huge gust of wind blew through and took one of the snowboards with it! Fortunately there was noone below. After digging the board out and then had some time to get out and have some fun. Day 2 was just me on my own with an instructor going over everything i'd missed due to arriving later than everyone else; pretty intense, and a suprising amount about the content of a beginner lesson. Fortunately there had been 40cm of snow overnight, so there was also plenty of freshies to be found! The course started in ernest the next day..

---