Reflections from Pacific Northwest

by Larry Davis, Santiam Pass PNW Division | Nov 19, 2025 | Program News, Spotlight Articles

Reflections from Larry Davis Pacific Northwest Division, Nordic Master #22

Before boots hit the colorful fallen leaves on the ground at Pike Glades, AMN25 (Avalanche, Mountaineering, Nordic) instructor participants were already deep into the work. The Annual AMN Instructor Refresher was successfully hosted at Pike Glades, NH September 25-28, 2025, and provided 80+ instructors with the opportunity to hone their instructional skills together in this rugged outdoor center. Avalanche, Mountain Travel & Rescue, and Nordic instructors and instructor candidates worked together to elevate learning.

Flipped Learning Model

Patroller School’s online AMN curriculum laid the groundwork  —  four content areas, each building on last year’s AMN24, designed not just to inform but to prepare. This wasn’t fluff. The material was practical, mountain-professional grade, and built for the field. By the time participants arrived, they weren’t just reviewing —  they were ready to coach and be coached. AMN’s flipped-classroom model isn’t just a clever phrase; it’s a shift in how we instruct and model effective outdoor instruction.

The whole point of bringing everyone out for three days was simple: elevate the skills and align the content. We’re running under a new mission too: “Rescue Ready Resource Smart.” It sounds like a bumper sticker, but it has deeper meaning. There were no PowerPoints® or long classroom lectures during field work. If you’re going to teach you need to be out there doing it, coaching activity, and not just standing and talking.

AMN’s flipped-classroom model wasn’t just a talking point— it was the backbone of AMN25. Patroller School’s Moodle LMS delivered four tightly focused modules ahead of the event, each building on last year’s AMN24 foundation. The content was practical, mountain-grade, and designed to stick. For many, it wasn’t just a refresher  —  it was a reset and level up. New accessibility features like text-to-speech made the material more inclusive to learning styles, and the Patroller School content remains available as a resource long after the tents are packed. In the field, CalTopo on mobile devices replaced the GPS standalone units, with offline downloaded layers giving patrollers the edge in planning and navigation. It’s a quiet shift, but a meaningful one — evolving to standard technology used by rescuers, without tech for the sake of technology.

Meet up in Pike Glades

Eastern Division instructors and others from as far as Oregon and Idaho came together to learn from each other, align, and elevate our instruction in Pike Glades. This is an excellent environment for a backcountry patroller school, with camping space, just the right number of rustic amenities, and expansive woods, trails, and hills perfect for practicing backcountry skills. Pike Glades is an area established for backcountry travel by the Granite Backcountry Alliance, with ongoing development of trails and amenities. GBA members were part of the weekend, both as volunteers and local experts helping patrollers understand the significance of the location and filling in local area knowledge. https://granitebackcountryalliance.org/

Instruction Technology – Prep for the Wilderness

The entire weekend was run on the philosophy that coaching replaces teaching. How’d we pull that off?

Instructors did the “classroom” homework before they even packed up the gear for travel. All the foundational knowledge was delivered online through the PatrollerSchool.org on the Moodle LMS. We’re serious about making this accessible too. We even rolled out Text-to-Speech (Natura Reader) as a new service in the Moodle courses this year, so everyone gets a fair shot at the material no matter what their learning style.

This pre-event preparation in Patroller School online meant that when you showed up at Pike Glades you weren’t wasting daylight. Every hour was dedicated to hands-on evolutions built around a tight cycle: “Content Delivery interspersed with Student Activities, monitored for effectiveness then repeated.” It’s about making a mistake, seeing it, fixing it, and owning the skill.

The Heart of the Lesson

The stations were focused on practical competence, standardization, and a couple of essential new tricks:

• Instructor Development lessons from Patroller School and coaching on the mountain helped participants to lean into the 6-Pack concepts of the Heart of the Lesson. Use the Heart of the Lesson and the Experiential Learning Cycle to guide the student’s growth collaboratively through active learning and coaching. The ID concepts permeated the other stations.
• Mountain Travel & Rescue (MTR): The focus was on low angle rescue systems. We’re standardizing these rope rescue systems education across the Eastern Division and simplifying the components so rescuers can get it right when it counts. The systems this year featured:
  • minimizing gear hauling requirements, e.g. munter hitches over descender devices, improvised webbing harnesses consistently tied,
  • anchors created with basket hitches, allowing sewn slings or pre-tied webbing to be used,
  • adding safety by using two inline prussic hitches for secure load capture,
  • rigging for simplified Up/Down directional changes during early system rigging, and
  • safety factor calculations for use in the field.
• Nordic/Backcountry: “You have to know where you are in these woods.” The Nordic station put the hands-on into navigation with mobile phone technology and SAR Topo app navigation. Following the trend for rescuers to use their mobile devices for navigation, we drilled skills with SAR Topo on mobile phones which is becoming a standard for rescue groups. The AMN leaders demonstrated, coached, and prepared each participant for a custom solo-route to find waypoints through the rugged New England woods. We brought it full circle after the electronic route-finding to plot our waypoints on paper maps and create a bearing and distance record of the adventure. Participants found their way, overcoming low cell signal by utilizing offline maps and pre-selected data layers. A sunny Sunday hike sealed the Nordic knowledge as participants collaborated to set and follow a route to the top of Iron Mountain, complete with snacks and a group photo opportunity.
• Avalanche : The practice focused on Avy transceiver search techniques and treating victims post-avalanche rescue-patient care for hypothermia. Skilled leaders coached participants to quickly and efficiently locate Avy victims in multi-burial scenarios while using common transceiver models and varied search techniques. The highest skill was the introduction of the Hypo Wrap technique. It’s a smart, simple backcountry method for keeping a hypothermic or an injured patient warm until additional resources and ground transport arrive. Don’t leave home without knowing it. Participants practiced with standard rescue equipment and improvised systems from whatever was available in their rescue packs.

Why We Show Up

The true value of AMN far outshines the checkbox for continuing education credits; participants experiencing community. You had patrollers and candidates from all over the Eastern Division and even some West Coasters camped out sharing a potluck on Saturday night and hashing out the details with program leaders. This event is where we build our leadership core. instructor candidates got essential mentoring and networking time, and many took home new instruction to share in their home area. The up level of consistency and professionalism you teach on your mountain this winter starts right here.