Public Avalanche Safety in Canada
Canada has taken a unique path in developing public avalanche safety for backcountry recreation. Europe’s alpine nations, where avalanche science was born, have focused on a rapid response to incidents and accidents, developing teams and techniques for professional rescue. In Canada, our expansive geography and relatively scarce population makes that approach unworkable. Instead, in this country, the focus has been on avalanche accident prevention.
A large avalanche runs over skiing terrain in the mountains of the Bow Valley. Photo: Avalanche Canada
Accident prevention means supporting backcountry users with training and tools that help them make good decisions in avalanche terrain, and providing them with the ability to respond to their own incidents effectively. Recreational avalanche training was first developed in the late 1980s, through the Canadian Ski Patrol Society and the Canadian Avalanche Association. Over the decades, the program and its curriculum evolved. Administration of the program was taken over by Avalanche Canada in 2004. Today, some 12,000 students take a course every winter.
Avalanche Canada’s training program is the national standard for recreationists, with a curriculum founded on science-based decision-making tools. The courses were originally developed for English-speaking backcountry skiers. A separate curriculum was developed for snowmobilers to address the specific needs of that user group, and the courses are also now provided in French.
The Avaluator is a decision aid for travelling in avalanche terrain and one example of the science-based tools developed in Canada for winter backcountry recreation. This tool is the foundation for the entry-level Avalanche Skills Training 1 course. The Avaluator and the AST 1 curriculum is used in seven other countries and has been translated to four other languages.
Professional avalanche training is standardized in Canada as well, and provided through the Canadian Avalanche Association (CAA), the organization representing professional avalanche workers in Canada. The courses within the CAA’s Industry Training Program are internationally recognized and essential to anyone in Canada pursuing a career in snow and avalanche safety.
These national standards of training contribute to the strong safety net that has been developed for winter backcountry users in the mountains of western Canada. Language, techniques, and tools are consistent throughout the educational progression for both recreational and professional training. Material introduced at the basic level forms a strong foundation, allowing further education to build and expand on core concepts.
Standardization is a basic tenet of effective risk communication, and one of the great strengths of Canada’s system. The consistent language found throughout the training programs is also found in the daily public avalanche forecasts. Different agencies provide daily avalanche forecasts in Canada, but all are accessed from one website – avalanche.ca – the “one-stop shop” for all avalanche-safety related information in Canada.
Avalanche Canada provides forecasts for fourteen regions that cover more than 300,000 square kilometres. In terms of area, this is the largest avalanche forecasting program in the world, by far. Parks Canada covers the mountain national parks, Alberta Parks forecasts for Kananaskis Country, and Avalanche Québec covers the Chic-Chocs in Québec’s Gaspé region.
The Avalanche Canada app allows users to access important avalanche safety information from their mobile devices.
All these forecasts are found on the same website, and all use the same forecasting software. This ensures users have a consistent format to work with. No matter the region, the structure of the forecast is the same, so users know exactly how and where to find their critical information.
But snowpack information is just one part of the avalanche safety equation. Equally important is understanding the complex interplay between the snowpack conditions and the terrain. One of the most important tools developed to help backcountry users learn how to identify avalanche terrain is the Avalanche Terrain Exposure Scale (ATES). ATES provides a simple, three-point description of how much a given piece of terrain is exposed to potential avalanche hazard, providing users with an important guideline for their decision-making process.
All of the popular backcountry trips in the mountain national parks are ATES rated, as are many of BC Parks. All of BC’s managed snowmobile areas are also ATES rated. However, the process of rating terrain with ATES remains fairly labour intensive and expensive. Within the next few years, we hope to be able to automate this system, which would give us the ability to provide ATES ratings for all the terrain being used for winter backcountry recreation.
Avalanche accident prevention also means developing a culture of avalanche safety within user groups. This allows peers to influence behaviour within their own community, encouraging a responsible and respectful approach to the winter mountain landscape as the norm. As backcountry users become more numerous and diverse, a healthy culture of safety and support becomes even more imperative.
This is where outreach plays an important role – bringing awareness of the avalanche problem to those who are new to the mountains, or new to our avalanche safety culture. There is no single message that fits all our target audiences. At Avalanche Canada, we work hard to connect with recreational users where we can. Traditional media, social media, workshops, seminars, and parking lot get-togethers, all play a role in developing this culture.
Social media plays an important role in our communication strategy. Posts such as this one are an effective method of conveying current snowpack conditions to local users.
All this work is being noticed. Other countries are licensing our curriculum, translating our tools, and collaborating with Canada to keep building on this strong foundation. The concept of avalanche accident prevention, by empowering users with information and tools to make their own decisions, is proving effective both here and abroad. It’s extremely rewarding to have our programs emulated, and we look forward to the innovations the next decade will bring.
Mary Clayton is the Communications Director for Avalanche Canada.