Our water minister's recent adventures prompted me to think again about snow hiking.
I'm pretty geared up and have navigated off track in SW Tasmania and done most of the well-known walks there, but I've always been a bit cautious about hiking in the snow. Did the Overland in July a few years ago and brought hire GPS, EPIRB and snow-shoes just in case. That went fine but I still feel under-confident to hike through snow, having no knowledge of how to build a snow-cave, or of safety issues in mountainous areas where cornices, etc exist.
I am wondering, how do you get skilled up to do these hikes? Is there formal training worth doing? I'm not talking about mountaineering training, just feeling adequately prepared to hike through full-on snow. What sort of contingency plans do you need to have? When we did the overland in winter, our basic plan was if a blizzard came through was to stop walking - if we could not see the next snow pole, immediately ensure we were adequately dry/warm (I've seen a friend get hypothermia while trying to pitch a tent due to not changing any clothing after stopping), attempt to pitch the tent wherever we were and sit it out. Failing that (eg if winds were too severe to pitch), our plan was to dig a hole, wrap ourselves in the tent fly, and try to keep dry. Luckily we never had to use this plan.
Is this a reasonable basic plan? Or do people have any recommendations, on either training, strategies/contingency plans, or anything else for snow-hiking?