Slabs 'n Sluffs - January in Review

In this episode of The Avalanche Hour, Caleb sits down with Chilean guides Manu Oliveres and Cristóbal Cattan in Las Trancas, Chile, to talk about skiing, guiding, and the rapidly evolving avalanche culture in South America. Both are deeply involved in the local mountain community and search and rescue, and their paths reflect a growing professionalization of avalanche education in Chile. They talk about learning to guide in the Andes, traveling abroad to gain experience in different snowpacks, and the challenge of building professional avalanche education and forecasting infrastructure in a region where those systems are still developing. The conversation also explores what it means to make good decisions in a changing backcountry culture. With more people entering the mountains through skiing, snowmobiling, heli-skiing, and social media, Manu and Cattan describe the need to move beyond simply having rescue equipment toward developing stronger avalanche knowledge, communication, forecasting, and decision-making. They share lessons from their own avalanche experiences, the importance of mentorship and learning from other snow climates, and why there are no shortcuts on the path to becoming a mountain professional. At its core, this is a conversation about a community building an avalanche culture from the ground up—and the value of sharing knowledge along the way.

Nikola and Stele are Croatian Mountain Rescue Service (HGSS) members. The HGSS has been operating for over 75 years, primarily tending to cave rescues, ocean rescue, rock rescue, and more recently, avalanche rescue. It is a nationwide rescue organization with over 2500 members. The alpine terrain in the country is minimal, but the country is an exporter of avalanche victims. Including a prolific accident that killed a member of the organization and injured several others in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina. Nikola and Stele have been involved with HGSS since they were young adults and serve as lead trainers, organizing international workshops for their organization's avalanche commission. HGSS has gained status as an ICAR delegate organization, and as of 2019 they regularly bring US avalanche instructors over to teach their team the emerging standards of North America. Working with these two on several custom programs, I have gotten to know their team and admire the commitment they place on advanced alpine training, often traveling to neighboring alpine countries like Slovenia, Austria, Italy, and France to practice. Summary of their conversation: Nikola Brebric and Stele Stefanac give an overview of the history of the Croatian Mountain Rescue Service highlighting: - Their involvement over two decades - How the dynamic contrast of the recreational opportunities influence training, education and prevention, and rescue operations. - The way a significant event shaped their organizations approach to internal training - How they have made connections across the globe to keep their team up to speed on the latest advances in Avalanche Search and Rescue. Croatian Mountain Rescue Service Website

Tune in for a great evening of live storytelling from ISSW 2026. Sara and Dom brought the Slabs 'n Sluff vibe to the Whistler audience and were joined by an amazing crew 8 of professionals from the snow and avalanche community. The theme of ISSW is “A Merging of Theory and Practice” so we let our storytellers loose with a request to “tell us a 5-7min story of a time when theory met practice in your career.”

Season 11 is just around the corner, kicking off October 1st. Join us for a shout out to one of our sponsors - Austin Powder, a major manufacturer of explosive products for the avalanche industry. Hear a bit about the history of the company, a time when the North American avalanche industry was close to starting a winter season without an explosive supplier, and stay tuned until the end to hear some observations and insights on cornice blasting and case charging. Learn about the history of the Avalauncher, and how mining rock blasting and avalanche control blasting are more similar than it might seem.

Setting the Track Juliana Garcia grew up climbing the volcanoes of Ecuador and became an international mountain guide—but skiing was the piece of the puzzle she still wanted to solve. In this episode, Brooke Maushund sits down with Juliana Garcia. Juliana takes us through her journey from climbing Cotopaxi as a teenager to becoming an IFMGA guide, learning snow and avalanche science as an adult, and bringing that knowledge back to the Andes. We talk about breaking into the guiding world as the first woman in several of her training programs, the mentors who helped shape her career, the evolution of avalanche education in Ecuador, and her work supporting the next generation of mountain guides. From Ecuador to Colorado, Alaska, and beyond, Juliana's story is about persistence, curiosity, mentorship, and finding a way to keep learning—no matter how long the journey takes. In this episode: Ecuador • Andes • Ski Guiding • Avalanche Education • IFMGA • Women in Guiding • Mentorship • Snow Science