MountainSafe: Increasing safety and awareness in the mountains in ski alpinism and related activities

Outdoor sports done in a mountainous environment are becoming more and more popular in the recent years all over Europe. These include a large pool of sports from general hiking, trail running, mountain biking to very specialized sports like climbing or ski alpinism. However -especially in some countries in the central-eastern-southern Europe area- the necessary background knowledge in health and safety, especially associated with the mountainous environment is often missing. Thus the main focus of the current project was to raise health and safety awareness for outdoor sports done in a mountainous environment, close the gap between amateur, hobby athletes and mountain professionals, put an emphasis on accident prevention and continue the work started in our previous Small Collaborative Erasmus+ Sports Project: “Up and down! Four season activity in the mountains: skimo and trail running” by developing a network of European organizations focusing on the safety aspects of these sports. The current project’s main focus was on ski alpinism (backcountry skiing, where both uphill and downhill travel is made on skis without the use of any motorized equipment e.g. without the use of lifts, and which usually also includes a number of techniques from classical alpinism, e.g. glacier traverse, also called ski touring and ski mountaineering or skimo). However the concepts formulated within this project have a much wider audience, including any people visiting the mountains for outdoor activities (i.e. freeriders, hikers, snowshoers, trail runners, mountain bikers, climbers), as the general basic safety guidelines are very similar for all these disciplines (called ‘associated sports, associated activities, related activities’ within the project).The backbone of the project were 2 Training Meetings, where the participants shared their knowledge and experiences and had the opportunity to train together in a systematic fashion on a set of predetermined topics. These Meetings were the following: Improving safety in the mountains in non-winter month (Croatia, October 2019) and Improving safety in the mountains in winter (Romania, February 2020). The main format of these Meetings were lectures, workshops and joint trainings. These activities were led by certified instructors, and the participants also had the option to achieve the REC1+ certificate of the American Avalanche Association on successful completion. The main emphasis during these Meetings was put on the safety aspects while doing skimo or related sports, as we believe this is the biggest of challenges each project country faces. We expect that the project results will have a wide impact on the local ski mountaineering communities, on the associated sports communities (climbers, trailrunners, hikers, etc.), and on the wider community wishing to visit mountains, as the project participants were chosen so that they represent those members of the sports community who already take up volunteer or professional educator roles (e.g. mountaineering instructors, trainers, volunteer tour leaders, volunteer rescue personal), participate in multiple sports activities and believe in community education and awareness. Our belief is that with wider awareness comes increased safety and motivation to educate oneself.