Snowmobilers undeterred after five killed in B.C. avalanche
Tragedy struck a chord for some, but they admit they only take ‘calculated risk’
MCBRIDE, B.C.— The day after a colossal avalanche killed five snowmobilers in eastern British Columbia, Thea Pelletier climbed aboard her machine and returned to the backcountry wilderness.
She unfastened a yellow plastic lily from her backpack and planted the flower in pristine snow to pay her respects.
“I had a moment. It was intense. It was bigger than thou,” Pelletier said. “You feel the insignificance of what you are when you’re up against mountains like this. I can’t imagine someone calling my mom to say, ‘ Your daughter is not coming home.’ ”
The B.C. Coroners Service revealed over the weekend the identities of the five Alberta men who died during a recreational outing on Mount Renshaw, near the small community of McBride, B.C. They were identified as Vincent Loewen, 52, of Vegreville; Tony Greenwood, 41, of Grand Prairie County; Ricky Robinson, 55, of Spruce Grove; Todd Chisholm, 47, of St. Albert; and John Garley, 49, of Stony Plain.
RCMP said they were in four separate groups that had converged just before the slide came roaring down.
By early Sunday, groups of snowmobilers prepared to leave McBride — some calling it a stressful weekend, while others believed more painful emotions would set in later.
Neil Petryshen, from Saskatoon, said he and his friends hadn’t absorbed the loss yet, but suggested the tragedy wouldn’t stop them from going out again.
“Why doesn’t it stop us? There’s different types of brain mentality for sledders,” he said, noting they weren’t into going up extreme peaks.
“But the risk-takers, they want to go there. As you advance, you want to push the limits.”
Pelletier, 31, and her husband were among exhilarated teams of sledders who returned to the parking lot near the mountain’s base after ripping around in the mountains.
She said she’d first heard of the deaths when a news alert flashed on her smartphone.
Her first reaction was “total shock,” she said. When she and her husband returned to McBride, they went to dinner at a restaurant that was packed with a sombre crowd.
“It was pretty heavy in there,” she said, after listening to rescuers describe pulling bodies and12 survivors from the snow. “They were just debriefing over a beer.”
But the couple still chose to head out the next morning on the moun- tain where the tragedy occurred.
Pelletier admitted feeling trepidation, but was confident they took proper precautions. “I guess I’m a risk-taker. But you have to take calculated risks,” she said. Though she and her husband steered well clear of the avalanche site, from one vista they could still see vast cracks where snow bowls had been disturbed. “You’ve got to go through a lot of sketchy areas to where those guys ended up,” she said.
Pelletier was nowhere near the victims the day they died but said she had often witnessed “showboating and a lot of testosterone” displayed in the male-dominated sport.
“When you go in big groups, I think there’s a mentality of one-upping each other,” she said. “We saw (the avalanche area) and said, ‘Why would you ever go up there?’ ”
Rock Major, from Saskatoon, said he wasn’t influenced by the fatalities because “I’m smarter than those guys.”
His friend, Shawn Rudolph, said he wasn’t thinking about the deaths, either. “You keep it in the back of your mind, but you don’t really think about it because it’ll just affect the way you treat the hill, and get into a spot where you’re gun-shy and nervous.”