Avalanche awareness classes scheduled at Gate Creek Cabins

MAT-SU — The Backcountry Avalanche Awareness & Response Team (BAART) will offer response team training rides tomorrow and next weekend.

Anyone interested in participating in the group's avalanche response team is urged to attend, according to the non-profits co-founder, Chris Noakes.

The classes will meet in Petersville at Mile 10.5 Petersville Road at the Gate Creek Cabins on March 25 and April 1 at 10 a.m.

Participants will be given basic training in avalanche safety, probing, and search and rescue, Noakes said. These particular classes are geared toward snowmachiners.

Anyone interested in the training rides is asked to bring along a beacon, probes and a shovel. Interested people can call Chris Noakes at 892-7073.

BAART is a local non-profit organization geared toward educating the community on avalanche awareness and safety as well as training in avalanche rescue.

The group got started last year, after Noakes lost a close friend, Robert "Keith" Coyne, in a snowmachining accident and less than a year after Arthur lost her son, 29-year-old Aaron Arthur, in an avalanche on Turnagain Pass.

Yesterday marked the two year anniversary of the Turnagain Pass avalanche that claimed the lives of six people.

This year, three people have been killed in avalanches around the Mat-Su Valley area.

On Sunday, a snowmachiner lost his life and a companion barely escaped an avalanche near Summit Lake off the Richardson Highway.

In February, two snowmachiners perished in an avalanche in Eureka.