Mountain Medicine on Skis 2025

Who should attend?

This course is for mountain mad medics and non-medics wanting to develop their skiing standard, ski tour and prepare for a mountain oriented expedition medic role. We welcome anybody of any age who meets the skiing standard and understands the dynamic, fluid nature of this course.

Timings – arrival / departure

Chalet check in is from 4pm Saturday (and there’s a locked left luggage “shed” for early arrivals/late departures). Chalet check out is 10am on the last day (Saturday).  The 6 ski days are Sunday to Friday.

Ski programme – Sunday to Friday

Day 1 – Ski warm up, mountain safety training/avalanche awareness & transceiver use

Day 2 – Developing piste ski skills; posture check, learning to flow, edge, ski with less effort, more grace, efficiency, and control of speed and the line taken.

Day 3 – Transistion to TOURING kit for week TWO participants – or for week ONE, continuation of exploring off piste; new techniques and tricks, choosing a safe line back-country

Day 4 – Alpine skiing then usually we collect rental touring skis late afternoon and teach how to put skins on, kick turn, and have a short practise ski on the beginner slopes in town to be sure everyone’s touring kit fits comfortably.

Days 5 & 6 – We’ll go ski touring*, off piste or glacier skiing depending on conditions and group ability, more student input to trip planning and execution, teaching and coaching en route

*Ski touring describes using special bindings and skins stuck on the base of the skis to enable one to climb – slide uphill essentially. This enables us to reach areas inaccessible by ski lifts so by definition we’re going off piste or back-country where the snow is not groomed or avalanche controlled. We might not turn you into a complete back-country ski ninja in six days but we’ll certainly advance your skills.

Medical training – overview

The medical training is focussed on managing trauma in the wild and environmental medicine – high, hot, cold and freezing which are of particular relevance to the mountain traveller. The WMT Medic course handbook provided (200+ pages) covers the full range of wilderness medicine topics and is an excellent aide memoire for further study and reference (as is the pre-course reading bundle – under DOWNLOADS).

The après ski tutorials and outdoor teaching is infused with cases and examples from real-world faculty austere medical experience to focus on the most pragmatic and useful information, emphasising what can be done by an expedition medic that is practical and achievable.

Après ski medical tutorial programme

Arrive Saturday – formal welcome if everyone arrives by 6pm otherwise there’s a Sunday morning briefing before skiing and the formal welcome Sunday evening.

Day 1 (Sunday) first ski day – Formal welcome and medical tutorials – Medical management of the avalanche victim – ICAR algorithm. Avalanche safety.

Day 2 Managing the trauma patient in a cold, hostile environment including “donut” approach to outdoor incident management and why just doing your ABCs in isolation isn’t enough. Faculty special career lectures some nights.

Day 3 Frostbite – exploring why “delay equals digits, faffing is fingers and time is toes”. Human dynamics in the outdoors – ski touring heuristics & case exercise.

Day 4 Hypothermia – exploring the maxim “cotton kills in the hills”.

Day 5 Altitude medicine – 3 syndromes, medicines and group management strategies.  Case: Everest illustrated presentation.

Day 6 (final ski day) Debrief of the week, feedback, certificates and formal course close. No evening tutorial.

Day 7 – depart (chalet check out by 10am)

Mountainside medical practical sessions

Trauma management & triage in the avalanche setting.

Cold mitigation strategies and equipment.

Femoral and pelvic fracture management, splint improvisation, moving, lifting and carrying a seriously injured casualty improvising with the kit one would carry in the mountains.

Dislocated shoulder relocation techniques.

Use of Penthrox.

Building snow shelters.

Useful, but basic, ropecraft.

Scenarios combining the mountaincraft and medical skills covered to care for a casualty in a cold, hostile environment.

The course handbook covers many other topics and we are happy to add informal tutorials over coffee on the slopes as interest and time permits. With a small course group, the instructors are available throughout to discuss anything of interest on the chairlift, slopes, “classroom” or after hours in the pub.

Ski standard required

As a minimum, week ONE (1-8 March) delegates need to be “good” intermediate level skiers, meaning;
• On groomed red runs, you consistently ski parallel turns and can control your speed and line down the mountain. If you easily fall over on red runs you don’t meet the standard.
• You can probably ski some black runs with a “I can get down anything” attitude but with less control and style.
• You are ski fit and able to ski a full day in any weather, love skiing and are very motivated to improve.

It’s vitally important that you do not over-egg your ability. Speak to WMT if you’re not sure you meet the minimum standard. Week TWO (8-15 March) participants must be ski fit competent off piste skiers with some ski touring experience so they understand the demands of multi-day ski touring.

Sorry – snow boarders cannot be accommodated.

Other experience, fitness & health warning

We have graded the physical demands of this course as HARD because skiing 6 full days, including some ski touring (ascending) requires reasonable fitness. You don’t need any climbing or mountaineering experience.

Only ski fit, team players that meet the minimum ski standard are invited on the most physically demanding course WMT offers.

This is not a ski racing, extreme skiing or steep skiing course and all ages are welcome. If  you don’t meet the skiing standard or are not ski fit and able to keep up, you will have to ski independently. It is not possible to dip in and out of each training day to join in when you feel like it. This is just not logistically practical or in the spirit of the course.

If you are an expert skier, you may be frustrated with the pace as we teach/coach those of a lower standard, but, that said, it’s always possible to improve your skiing. This is not a holiday with late starts, lots of coffee stops and faffing. This is an intense and fun group experience with a lot of ski time though we – and you! – always need to remain flexible due to weather, avalanche risks and other factors beyond WMT’s control.

Accreditation

We estimate that this programme is valid for at least 12 CPD hours.

What’s included in the fee

What’s included in the fee?

• All instruction/tuition/lectures – 6 days of skiing with medical training input as outlined above
• 7 nights twin room chalet accommodation (single gender where possible if the numbers balance but cannot be guaranteed)
• loan of transceiver, shovel & probe for the week
• WMT Medic Course Notes (A5 200+ page book)
• In-resort transportation to/from the slopes for 6 days

What’s not included?

• Ski equipment – some days you’ll require touring skis and boots which you can rent
• Ski passes
• Meals, drinks, flights, insurance, airport transfers
• Anything not expressly mentioned is not included which may include supplementary costs if we ski tour further afield and stay in a mountain refuge (shared additional costs might include tunnel fees, fuel, accommodation and staff meals/drinks). Often, the added cost of a hut night is offset by a cheaper ski pass or sometimes a ski pass is not even required.

Teaching Team 2025

French ski instructor and international mountain guide Luc Bellon and WMT’s ski addict Barry Roberts will deliver both courses. Together they led the very successful April 2024 Norway Ski Touring Expedition. Their bios are below.

The medical instructor for the first course is WMT’s Medical Director ED consultant Dr Duncan Gray, who has taught this course many times. Read his bio HERE. For the second course, Dr Alex Reid is the medical instructor. Alex holds the full array of UK mountaineering and ski touring professional qualifications.

Luc Bellon IFMGA Mountain Guide
Luc is an internationally qualified high mountain guide and top level (4) ski instructor with an extensive background in mountain rescue as a former mountain policeman with the Chamonix PGHM. He has worked extensively with WMT.

Barry Roberts BSc BEd, WMT Commercial Director
Baz has maintained a long-standing interest in adventure and wilderness medicine since ski patrolling, climbing and leading canoe expeditions in Canada from the age of 15. He has ski toured in Pakistan, Nepal, Tibet, Morocco, Greenland, Norway and other conventional places! He is the co-author of Staying Alive Off-piste, a contributing author to the OUP expedition medicine handbook and author of many adventure magazine features. From ’04 to ’08 he was an ambassador for The North Face. Ski expedition highlights include 4 Greenland ski touring trip including guiding the first winter ascent of the highest mountain in the Arctic (3700+m Gunnsbjornsfjeld in Greenland) from which he paraglided off, skiing Mont Blanc and 4 Norway ski trips.

Other information