MOUNT BAKER, Wash. (AP) – Walker Smith has been skiing in-bounds at resorts since he was young, but lately the Seattle teen has become more interested “in getting tracks where no one else has really gone.”
He knows backcountry travel comes with avalanche risks, he said. So under a brilliant blue sky one Saturday, he and a dozen teens hiked out into the snowy landscape outside the boundaries of Mount Baker ski resort to learn how to identify avalanche terrain and spot warning signs.
“It’s not 100 percent safe in the backcountry so you have to know about all the dangers,” said Smith, 17, a member of the Mountaineers Adventure Club, a Seattle-based teen program that partnered with Northwest Avalanche Center to organize the avalanche awareness field trip.
As more young adults head out of bounds to ski, snowboard or hike in the winter, experts are targeting their message about avalanche safety to an even younger audience. They’re trying to reach kids early – in middle or high school, sometimes even in elementary school – to build their knowledge about snow and avalanches.
“They’re young, they’re impressionable. They don’t have a pattern of bad behavior yet. By spending more time on youth, we feel like we can make a difference in changing behavior,” said Scott Schell, program director of the Northwest Avalanche Center, a Seattle-based non-profit and federal government partnership.