The Central Alberta director of the Alberta Snowmobile Association says an avalanche scale unveiled in Calgary on Wednesday was pretty much old news.
“They made it sound like it was something new,” said James Brady, also president of the Caroline Snowmobile Club.
Brady says that a very similar ratings system was already available online and in the form of Avaluator cards that snowmobilers can carry with them to determine the level of avalanche danger given the conditions.
But the new system “is a good thing for the fact that not everybody visits the Canadian Avalanche Centre website, they just take off and go and ride,” said Brady, 48, who has been riding since he was 14, although he gave up riding the mountains years ago.
He would like to see the scale implemented in various ways.
“Having signs at the trail head, that kind of covers everybody. If you see ‘Oh it’s extreme today,’ and you still want to go participate in the hill climb, then to me you’re totally on your own.”
The announcement of the system — developed by Parks Canada in conjunction with several other organizations and destined for rollout across North America next year — came just days after an avalanche on Turbo Hill, by Revelstoke, B.C., buried many snowmobilers and left two Alberta men dead.
One of those men was 33-year-old Shay Snortland of Lacombe. Mike Harker, who worked with Snortland and Kurtis Reynolds at K&S Oilfield Hauling and was there when the snow hit, said he didn’t know about the serious avalanche risks in the area when he went snowmobiling with the two, but added that he probably “wouldn’t have had to dig very hard to find out.”
He said he had no way of knowing whether the group would have continued into the backcountry had there been signs up warning them of the danger.
But, Harker said, they would have probably positioned themselves differently on the slopes and not congregated “in the throat of it” at the bottom of the hill.
Brady has taken an avalanche safety course three times in the past 15 years, and said he was happy to see some of the affected group had avalanche rescue equipment like beacons and shovels handy.
Anyone who sleds in the mountains should do the course and have the gear, he said.
This is a sentiment echoed by Lyle Statham of the Olds Snowmobile Club, who said most of the riders there were trained for avalanches.
“A buried person has usually less than 15 minutes to live in a burial situation. How long do you think it takes the actual rescue people to get there from (Revelstoke)? If the other sledders in your party don’t rescue you, the police . . . will only retrieve a dead body by the time they ever get there,” he wrote in an email interview.
Local snowmobilers agree that as more people take up sledding and hit the mountains, there are more highly-publicized avalanche tragedies.
But for some, the risk is worth the reward.
“It’s the challenge and the thrill of it . . . the terrain, it’s harder to ride, a hill compared to flat, and the snow’s way deeper,” said Clint Bromling, president of the David Thompson Snowriders, a club with members in Eckville, Sylvan Lake and Red Deer.
“It’s a safe sport if you prepare, if you use common sense and have avalanche training.”
A funeral for Snortland will take place at 1 p.m. Monday at Holy Family Parish in Medicine Hat. A wake will follow at 4 p.m. at the Cypress Centre.
A funeral for Reynolds will be held at the Coast Hotel in Lethbridge at 2 p.m. Tuesday.
mgauk@www.reddeeradvocate.com