AVALANCHE RISK OFTEN IGNORED
HUMAN NATURE CAN NEGATE PREPARATION
In December 2008, three men from the eastern B.C. town of Sparwood stood in the snow and made an agonizing decision.
The trio had been swept off their snowmobiles in an avalanche and had dug frantically to save themselves and each other from suffocating in the snow.
Eight of their friends were still buried. They decided to leave them and run for help. Their trapped friends all died.
The group of 11 were snowmobiling in the backcountry near Fernie, B.C., when they were struck by several avalanches, and their plight highlighted the advantages and shortcomings of modern avalanche forecasting and rescue.
Canada lives with avalanches. They happen countless times every winter but we tend only to hear about them when they claim lives. They are arguably the most foreseeable but least comprehensible natural disaster the country faces.
Despite a proximity and familiarity with avalanches, especially in Western Canada, for years our approach to the risk they posed was largely reactive. Unless you sought information yourself, you had little to go on.
Then came the winter of 200203. Twenty-nine people perished in avalanches that season, Canada’s worst toll since 1965. Among the dead were eight teenagers on a ski trip with Strathcona-Tweedsmuir School from Okotoks.
Tragic instances of natural disasters — the southern Alberta floods in June, the 2011 Slave Lake wildfire, the 1987 Edmonton tornado — often prompt a “what have we learned?” response. The winter of 2002-03 triggered some soul-searching in the ski and snow community.
“2003 was definitely a watershed,” Parks Canada mountain risk specialist Grant Statham said.
“It was a terrible winter and, in the wake of that, lots of things have changed.”
Statham ushered in a new public warning system for backcountry snow users. Known as ATES (the Avalanche Terrain Exposure Scale), it put terrain into three tiers — simple, challenging and complex — as a third dimension for determining avalanche risk.
Previously, only snowfall and weather were considered, so the risk for a large area could be classified “high” regardless of whether you were standing in a known avalanche path or not.
“The snow forecast would have been similar (10 years ago) but there was no way for us to distinguish between high-risk terrain and lowrisk terrain,” Statham said.
The science behind avalanche forecasting has developed some in the past decade, but it is still a rudimentary practice.
“Really, it’s still the fundamental process of a person digging a hole in the snow ... and taking a look at what’s down there,” Statham said.
What has improved is how avalanche information is disseminated.
As recently as a decade ago, forecasts of avalanche risk were dense, jargon-heavy documents. Few had much of a problem with this, as the people who sought out such reports were largely professionals who could understand and interpret them.
Back then, things were run by the Canadian Avalanche Association, which had next to no funding and ran a forecasting program as a sideline.
“They saw a need for it but they kind of did it out of their own pockets,” said Karl Klassen, the Canadian Avalanche Centre’s public warning manager.
The avalanche centre (CAC) was founded after the tragic 2002-03 winter with funding from the federal, Alberta and B.C. governments.
“We started looking at the way we transmitted (avalanche risk) messages,” Klassen said.
“Shorter blocks of text, simple language, breaking the information into pieces so people with less experience and less knowledge still got something out of it.”
CAC and other groups promote avalanche awareness and safety like never before — media alerts are perhaps the best example — but the backcountry is there for Canadians to enjoy, whatever the risk.
For all the advances in science, communication and public awareness, the human element is the biggest hurdle facing the experts tasked with preventing future tragedies.
“When we started working with some of these other user groups it became clear to us that they didn’t know much about avalanches,” Klassen said.
“They didn’t realize avalanche forecasts even existed, and some didn’t have the training or experience to even use one if they did get their hands on it.”
Snowmobilers are a force unto their own among the new wave of backcountry enthusiasts. Their hobby takes them higher, faster and farther than all other users of the terrain. So when they get into trouble, they often need rescuing.
“It means far greater search areas and increased risk for us,” Alberta Search and Rescue Association president Daryl Black said.
“Now we’re exposing our searchers and rescuers to environments that previously we wouldn’t have to.”
The popularity of snowmobiling has exploded in recent years, Black said, but adherence to safety measures hasn’t kept pace.
“(There is) this huge reliance on ‘I’ve got this GPS, I’ll be good.’ We’re seeing this technology outstripping the individual’s ability to just function in basic fashion in the backcountry,” Black said.
Lori Zacaruk has been teaching avalanche risk to snowmobilers in Alberta and Saskatchewan for 15 years. She estimates about 30 per cent of users have some avalanche training before taking to the slopes.
“That’s unfortunate, because there’s so many options nowadays to do it.”
Time was the big factor in people not seeking training, she said, rather than money or apathy, but a minority still thought they knew better.
“A lot of people that have been in the mountains for many years say ‘I don’t need avalanche training ... I just know.’
“I’ve taught a number of people after the accident or the fatality or the close call. I feel for them because I know that they’re listening and thinking ‘That’s what we did, or didn’t do.’ I can see it in their eyes.”
Zacaruk travels regularly to eastern Alberta and Saskatchewan to give classroom lessons. Places where snowmobilers would otherwise have had zero training.
The Prairies are an unlikely focus for avalanche experts trying to promote mountain safety — an indication of the reach of the backcountry’s popularity. But while plains people could be forgiven a lack of alpine expertise, Western Canadians might not.
“Even within our western mountains there’s pockets where we know the idea of education hasn’t really become the norm yet,” Klassen said.
“Northeast British Columbia, Newfoundland and the Prairies. If I had unlimited funds, those are the places I would target very, very heavily.”
One safety feature that has arisen in recent years is the digital transceiver — a personal beacon that emits a traceable signal. If the owner is buried in snow, an alert is sent via satellite and the right emergency service notified.
Kananaskis Country public safety specialist Burke Duncan said transceivers have been the difference between life and death on several rescues.
“Especially if things have happened late in the day where flying time’s limited because of darkness (or) people have had traumatic injuries who wouldn’t have survived the night, or another two to four hours.”
Search and rescue teams are usually alerted within 15 minutes if a mayday call comes from a transceiver, Duncan said. Traditional responses — when someone walked out of the backcountry to raise the alarm — often took one or two hours, as it did in the Sparwood tragedy.
Still, Duncan estimates only about 30 per cent of backcountry users carry a transceiver.
“It’s Alberta. People don’t like being told what to do.
“There’s costs involved that people find prohibitive but ... (transceiver-initiated rescues) we’ve been to, the people were pretty glad they had it.”
Duncan said his own transceiver cost about $150, and the annual monitoring subscription is $100.
Transceivers, though, are best used by the companions of a trapped person rather than rescuers, Statham said.
“A person really has about 10 minutes to live once they’re buried under the snow. It’s usually too late by the time we get there.”
Avalanches are perhaps the most unique of Canada’s disasters.
Other natural threats such as a flood or a hurricane are actively avoided. But we consciously venture into areas where avalanches are a threat. They are the most human of disasters, because their tragedy relies on us.
You can build stronger buildings to withstand earthquakes, berms to divert flood waters, install warning sirens for tornadoes, but you can only inform people about avalanches and hope they heed the warnings. There is little more authorities can do.
The 11 Sparwood men were no different than thousands of other backcountry users. They had many of the tools of modern avalanche risk at their disposal but, once faced with a deadly wall of snow, there was little anyone could do.