High Winds and Avalanches

Another week, another post.
The day after my last post I worked on the Gondola (The Eagle Eye Express if you looked on the interactive map linked in my last post) and it turned out to be a very windy day. I started up the top near the Eagles Eye Restraunt to drive it and we opened up to public at 9am. By 10:30 we had to stop loading because the winds were reaching 40 - 50km/hr which, when heading in the right direction (which they were) make the cabins swing and make them jam when the enter the station. Our highest gust was over 60km/hr and Stairway to Heaven experienced even higher winds getting hit with 90km gusts. After 3 hours of doing nothing (and getting paid for it :P), we finally got the call to close and we headed down the hill. It was my earliest day yet.

Yesterday was the last day of the 3 day Avalanche Course I did. It was organised by one of the girls from my lift ops crew and was for staff only so it only cost us $50 each. We had a 2 hour theory session on monday night and then two days of practical on wednesday and thursday. Unfortunatly there was a Lift Ops party on tuesday night hosted by our (the A crew) supervisor Tyler which left all of us feeling pretty seedy at 9am the next day when the course started. We all powered through though and it turned out to be a good couple of days.
We can now take people into the back country and be able to make informed and (hopefully) good decisions based on conditions and what the slope looks like although only on the simple class terrain.
Having said that I dont think Ill be going into the backcountry just yet, there have been a few avalanches in the area lately and we heard yesterday that a man was killed by an avalanache in Canyon Creek, which is the valley just behind the Eagles Eye.
Anyways it was a cool course and I learned so much about the properties of snow and snow pack in different conditions.

Have a good one.