A new project is aiming at furthering avalanche education among mountain snowmobilers. Through the initiative, the Canadian Avalanche Centre is hoping to cut the rate of avalanche deaths within the snowmobiling community.
“In the winter of 2008-09, snowmobile deaths made up 73% of avalanche fatalities,” says Kootenay-East MLA Bill Bennett.
Plans announced Friday in Fernie will go towards preventing that number from growing further.
The Mountain Snowmobile Education Project will focus on training, showing mountain sledders threats they may not know exist.
“What we see when we study avalanche accident statistics, is that people were unaware of the risks they were taking,” says Ian Tomm, Executive Director of the Canadian Avalanche Centre. “At the end of the day, this project will be successful if we can communicate to the mountain snowmobilers so they truly understand the risks.”
Communication is expected to play a major role in the project. Officials from the CAC say they’ll rely heavily on working with veteran sledders.
“There are a lot of very experienced snowmobilers in the area who spend time in the backcountry year-round,” says Gord Ohm, Field Tech with the CAC South Rockies Safety Program. “They have viewpoints we may not have, and that helps us interpret our information.”
A significant shift in snowmobiling over the last two decades has led to more powerful machines than ever, making education key when hitting the trails.
“These machines are injecting people into terrain that previously snowmobiles were unable to get to,” says Tomm.
“There was a few years where knowledge and education didn’t match the ability of the snowmobiles,” says Ohm. “Now with high profile accidents, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who was keeping their head in the sand about the issue.”
Organizers say the project will work closely with snowmobile clubs and organizations within their individual communities.
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