- Date
- Saturday, January 17, 2015
Avalanche Awareness Days in Tumbler Ridge, BC
After a casual 15 hour drive on snowy roads from Revelstoke, we finally arrived in Tumbler Ridge Friday night. We went right to bed to rest up for Avalanche Awareness days which would be celebrated for the first time in Tumbler Ridge.
Tim Bennett of Recreation Sites & Trails BC worked with the local snowmobile club, The Tumbler Ridge Riders to setup a great Avalanche Awareness Days event at the Core Lodge facility.
19 backcountry enthusiasts came out to the event. There were a lot of folks with significant sledding experience, but only a few participants had taken any formal avalanche education. We were psyched to see so many riders out ready to learn more about avalanche safety.
Brent Strand and I talked about the resources that Northern Rockies riders have at their disposal including the new Mountain Information Network and the North Rockies Report that comes out every Thursday evening.
One of the biggest challenges facing the North Rockies is the lack of snow and avalanche observations. The quality of the weekly North Rockies report is directly correlated to the amount of observations produced in the region. That’s why the Mountain Information Network (MIN) has the potential to be super powerful tool, especially in this data sparse region. For the first time, we have a way of gathering and displaying public observations like the one we submitted earlier this evening.
After going through the powerful new MIN, Brent and I took the group over to the flats near the cabin to demonstrate a few snowpack tests. With only 80cm of snow at the parking lot at 1300m, it’s looking a little thin out there.
Most of the province has a crust/surface hoar combo that was formed in Mid-December. We found this interface in our snow profile down approximately 50cm. We’ll be watching the reactivity of this interface carefully while we travel in the North Rockies for the next few days.
Post snow profile, we setup a mock rescue to get the group thinking about just how challenging avalanche rescue really is.
After a few hot dogs and a wrap up talk we headed back to town to install our new Tiny Mo Pro racks on our Arctic Cat and Yamaha machines. We're staying with Brent's parents in Tumbler Ridge. Brent's dad Ole was kind enough to help us install the new racks. The setup was pretty straightforward and the racks look bomber! I look forward to seeing how they preform this season.
It’s been another long day. Time to wrap it up and prepare for our field day tomorrow in the Tumbler Ridge backcountry.