Tyler's Backcountry Awareness

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Fort Collins, CO
Tyler's Backcountry Awareness

Empowering and challenging backcountry riders to expand their skills so that their adventures can reach new heights.

Backcountry rider Tyler Lundstedt’s undeniable and contagious passion for snowmobiling in the great Rocky Mountains led him and fellow riders to ever greater heights and challenges. Born in 1987, Tyler came to work in construction and running heavy equipment, but that was just to pay the snowmobiling bills. Ever smiling and always with a helping hand, Tyler would be found engaged in something productive. Those riding with Tyler would experience the mountains in ways most never will. The more obscure and hard to reach places offer the challenges and skill-building excitement an enthusiastic rider can appreciate. On January 21, 2012 Tyler died in an avalanche near Buffalo Pass in Colorado. The passion he shared with the world is a tremendous legacy. Tyler’s Backcountry Awareness was created to challenge riders to build their skills in safety and preparedness.

12/29/2025

Intro to Avalanches

The classroom session will run from 6pm to approximately 9pm. Field work will start a trailhead the following morning at 8am and end before 5 pm.

Venue Muddy Creek Parking Area
Address Rabbit Ears PassRabbit Ears Pass, Colorado
Starts Fri Feb 20 2026, 7:00pm CST
Ends Sat Feb 21 2026, 5:00pm CST

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12/23/2025

Assembling a strong, well rounded group means that each individual agrees to travel together, decide together, listen to all voices, challenge assumptions, and respect any veto. This can short-circuit detrimental human factors and help everyone make smarter, safer decisions.

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12/17/2025

It is important to evaluate your avalanche rescue skills to make sure you are reinforcing correct habits and continuing to improve skills you may infrequently use. You want to be able to employ your skills efficiently in coordination with your team. As noted earlier, the chance of survival decreases significantly after 10 minutes. Timing your practice gives you an indication of how effective your skills would be in a real life incident response. Practice and time your skills to ensure you are able to recover a target buried at least 3 feet deep in 10 minutes or less.

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12/14/2025

The AIARE Rescue class The SAFER course is a one-day First Aid and CPR course oriented towards the hazards presented by backcountry snowmobiling.
Students will receive a Red Cross First Aid/CPR/AED certification upon completion of the class.

Personal protective and avalanche rescue equipment
Identify and familiarize students with winter personal protective, avalanche rescue, and self-evacuation equipment and their proper use
Demonstrate and practice routines to check gear’s function

Demonstrate avalanche rescue
Introduce Avalanche Rescue Quick Reference tool and apply it to a scenario
Breakdown and practice individuals skills of avalanche rescue: assessing the scene and taking leadership, using a transceiver, using a probe, and shoveling

Single burial scenarios
Learn to set up effective scenarios for practice
Integrate individual skills into a rescue scenario

Patient considerations and evacuation
Identify potential patient care considerations resulting from avalanche burial or involvement
Name equipment for self-evacuation and communication to outside resources
Describe considerations when interfacing with Search and Rescue and Emergency Medical Services

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12/11/2025

In all of our learning offerings, we strive to give you a variety of terrain and snow layer experiences to enhance and extend your understanding of avalanche safety.

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12/08/2025

At the end of each day, you and your group can gain valuable experience comparing what what was anticipated and what you saw. Summarize Conditions and Submit Your Observations to your local avalanche center. Just as importantly, Review Today’s Decisions and Improve Today’s Plan. Debriefing insights stick when they can be immediately visualized. Asking “If we went back to the same slope in the same conditions tomorrow, what would we do differently?” is a more specific and potentially more valuable rewording of the broad question “What could we have done better?”

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12/05/2025

Why is avalanche education required in elevation and on the snow?

On-the-snow training is required for avalanche classes because real, hands-on experience is essential for developing the skills needed to travel safely in avalanche terrain. Classroom learning can teach you the theory—how avalanches form, how to read forecasts, and how rescue gear works—but it can’t replicate the conditions you face in the mountains. In the field, students learn how to recognize terrain traps, evaluate snowpack layers, identify signs of instability, and practice safe travel techniques in real environments. Most importantly, on-snow training provides realistic practice with beacons, probes, and shovels, allowing students to build the speed, accuracy, and confidence needed in an actual rescue scenario, where every second matters.

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12/02/2025

Practicing avalanche rescue is rehearsing for an unlikely but possible emergency situation. Learn how to best conduct an avalanche rescue by taking an Avalanche Rescue Course. To keep your skills sharp and make sure you are reinforcing the correct habits, frequently review this avalanche rescue section, practice throughout the season, and regularly retake the Avalanche Rescue Course to gain experience working with others in realistic scenarios and receive coaching from experienced professionals.

Cover these three areas of skill each time you Practice Avalanche Rescue:
• How to respond if you are caught in an avalanche
• How to organize avalanche rescue with teammates
• How to care for and evacuate an injured party from the backcountry

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11/30/2025

With practice, you and your riding group can adapt these pieces into a smooth flow that enhances your riding experience and helps you develop a lifelong practice of managing risk in avalanche terrain.

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Address

1401 E Lincoln Avenue
Fort Collins, CO
80524

Website

http://Backcountryawareness.org/

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