Avoid backcountry, avalanche centre warns

And now that the warning has been issued, guess where they'll all be heading...

And the ski patrol and park rangers will still receive all the blame for every one of these nitwits who ends up getting killed. Wheeeee.......?

More candidates for the Darwin Awards coming up.....

More candidates for the Darwin Awards coming up.....
Yep. Stay tuned for the complete list of popsicles in Monday's news.

If they go out, they have no one to blame but themselves. I've skied at Kokanee Glacier several times. Incredible area, but you've got to know what you're doing. I think news reports said the party where an Albertan got killed didn't have transceivers - just nuts to go in the back country without them. OTOH, this guy was only buried 5 minutes and could not be revived by a doctor. The statistic I've heard are that 1/2 o of all avalanche fatalities are in the first 30 minutes. Avalanche hazard evaluation is not an exact science. Skiing on uncontrolled back country slopes will always be a hazard, the best ski slopes also have the highest avalanche potential, and some people at Fernie, I believe, got hit (but not injured) even while skiing in bounds.

These days it's more the snowmobile yahoos that get killed. They can easily get way out in the back country, mostly have no avalanche training, and their machines can easily trigger an slide.

There's a famous movie of somebody filming a huge powder avalanche. Last thing you see is the slide making it all the way to where the camera was, and bye bye camera man.

What can you say but "Hey, let's be careful out there."

I've been getting into backcountry skiing, only been a few times so far though.

I have a transceiver, probe, shovel, air-lung and i took a 3 day AST1 avalanche course 2 years ago.

I didn't go this weekend not because of these warnings, but because there isn't much new snow up near Whistler. These news stories are more about the rockies area atm.

PS, here is a video i recorded of my last backcountry outing a few weeks ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5NE1qsgdPg

Not bad

Going into 'severe avalanche warning areas' is akin to goin to the beach after being warned about an impending hurricane! But there is always going to be those people who say " I'll be OK cuz "i'M a really good swimmer"!