Ortovox Avalanche Awareness Tour 2016

Skiing off piste can be no more risky than driving your car on the road (and is a lot more fun)

… if you get the right training

Henry Schniewind and the HAT team are back in the UK this Autumn to deliver the Ortovox Avalanche Awareness Tour at venues across the UK from Fort William to Sandbanks and many cities in between including London, Glasgow, Manchester, Cardiff and Bristol.

The events kick off on 16th October and run through to 30th January.

The Ortovox Avalanche Awareness Tour 2016 is a series of live multimedia talks and outdoor training events about how to have fun and be safe while riding off piste this season. The programme has three different types of events.

1. The Essentials talk – a must see talk, full of ‘essential’ information for all off-piste skiers, no matter how experienced you are.
2. In-depth talk – Understand exactly how avalanches are triggered (for those who have already seen the Essentials Talk).
3. Transceiver training – practical outdoor training on how to use the safety equipment to locate a buried avalanche victim in 5 minutes and rescue them in less than 15 minutes.

The whole tour designed to help off-piste skiers and boarders answer the critical question “Is it safe out there?” We explain that there is no simple yes or no answer. The right answer is, it depends on you. It depends on:

• Where you go and when,
• How you go down or up
• How well prepared you are.

The talks use exciting images, videos and stories of accidents, great skiing along with close calls with danger. Henry delivers a risk management formula that will help skiers to see how skiing off-piste can be no more dangerous than the activities that we engage in each day, such as driving on the road.

Details of dates, venues and online ticket purchasing

Early bird ticket offers

There are early bird ticket offers for people who book before 30th September. Tickets for talks are reduced from £12.50 to £10 and Transceiver training is reduced from £57.50 to £42.50

This programme could not be delivered without the support of Ortovox, Ellis Brigham, Val d’Isere and the Ski Club.

Background on Henry’s Avalanche Talk

(HAT) provides training and essential information for skiers who want to go off piste, but are held back by fear of the unknown. HAT is known for helping ordinary skiers have an extraordinary experience off piste. We leave people feeling liberated and unleashed.

Henry’s Avalanche Talk has been around for 25 years and has grown into a team of off-piste professionals, often referred to as HAT. We have given talks and courses to tens of thousands of people, presented at international snow science conferences and published many papers and articles, often in the British press.

There are two types of skiers we help. The first are experienced skiers who go off-piste, take risks they don’t understand and could easily suffer an avalanche accident. The second are regular skiers who are reluctant to go off-piste because they think it is dangerous and scary due to avalanche danger and the hazards of navigating unfamiliar terrain. But avalanche accidents are not random unpredictable events. It is a fact that 9 out of 10 avalanche victims trigger the avalanche themselves.

This means that once you know how to manage the risks, you can make the off-piste no riskier than driving your car at home. The conventional solution is to hire a guide, but they are expensive and are often reluctant to share their knowledge. If people do look up professional avalanche literature it tends to reinforce the idea that this stuff is too difficult to learn and that off-piste remains off limits, dangerous and scary.

So we have created a method that demystifies the expertise and teaches skiers how they can go beyond the piste, have much more fun and stay safe, all at the same time. The programme helps people answer the critical question “Is it safe out there?” We explain that there is no simple yes or no answer. The right answer is it depends on you. It depends on where you go and when, how you go down or up and how well prepared you are.

We deliver training in the UK, Val d’Isere and online. HAT is known for helping ordinary skiers have an extraordinary experience off piste. We aim to leave people feeling liberated and unleashed.

Background on Henry Schniewind

Henry is an internationally renowned snow and avalanche expert who studied avalanche forecasting as part of a Geology degree in the United States and then moved to the French Alps where he works as an off-piste ski guide and director of Henrys Avalanche Talk. He has given over 750 talks and courses in the last 20 years including presenting at international snow science conferences. He has published many papers and articles-often in the British press.

Henry created Henrys Avalanche Talk (HAT) in response to the fact that 9 out of 10 victims of avalanches trigger the avalanche themselves and many of these could have been avoided. He delivers a risk management formula that will help you to see how riding off piste can be no more dangerous than the activities that you engage in everyday.

JC Souillac photo

Henry has been guiding off-piste for close to 20 seasons in Val d’Isère. In addition to his academic work in snow and avalanche forecasting, he holds a Fully Certified French Ski Instructor Degree from the Ecole Nationale de Ski et d’Alpinisme. Henry and HAT are endorsed by ANENA (The French National Association for Snow and Avalanche Study). Henry is also a certified Professional Member of the American Avalanche Association and has numerous ties with other snow and avalanche organisations worldwide. Henry began his skiing career as a racer in New England.