In collaboration with the American Institute of Avalanche Research and Education (AIARE) and the Northwest Avalanche Center (NWAC), we are working through this journey of the youth avalanche and snow safety education rebuild.
We completed a worldwide assessment of existing youth education programs where we researched the global landscape of existing curriculums, surfaced past academic research in youth education, and connected with avalanche centers domestically and internationally.
This baseline enabled us to frame the scope of the (re)build, including networking with existing programs, and ultimately allowing us to build the best youth avalanche education program in the world.
We have created the initial curriculum with the first pilot in collaboration with The Mountaineers Adventure Club (MAC) during the 2019-2020 winter season. Curriculum and course development continued during 2020 with the feedback and learnings from the first pilot.
We are now getting ready to run second round of pilot courses across Washington and Idaho during the 2020-2021 winter season.
Our ambitions about U.S. national and even global reach have further strengthened and we aim to be ready for that scale starting 2021.