Canada, or ‘America’s Hat,’ has an extraordinary amount of snowy hillsides that abut roads in their own national parks. This video shows how the park drops bombs from helicopters to run avalanche control. Lighting the charges and throwing them out the door of a chopper is pretty insane. At least if something goes wrong when you’re doing it outside you can run away.
Sunshine Village ski area in Banff fired four longtime staffers days after a ski patroller reprimanded the resort owner’s son skiing out of bounds. The junior patroller busted the kid with four friends and told them to get back inbounds. Twelve days later four of the resort staff were fired by the kid’s dad after they were questioned about the event and the junior patroller refused to write a letter of apology. A few days later all but six ski patrollers staged a sick-day walkout, and the resort opened with only a couple lifts in operation.
The guys who got cut loose weren’t college kids taking a year off - most had been working at the resort for nearly 30 years. They’ve filed a wrongful termination lawsuit for about $500k.
I wonder who this kid’s dad will fire when his kid gets buried in an avalanche while skiing out of bounds.
A study in Canada that looked at avalanche fatality data over the last three years has found that snowmobilers are more likely to die than skiers. If you consider that snowmobilers can cover a lot more ground and therefore traverse more avalanche-prone terrain, it makes sense that they’d be more likely to get caught in something catastrophic.
Why does making something smaller automatically make it cuter? I’ve honestly heard women describe travel-sized sticks of deodorant as ‘cute.’ I think miniaturization is creepy, but I like that it makes me feel like a giant. When I give up writing The Goat for Backcountry.com, you’ll all be invited to my Giant Rocky party, where we’ll drink 7oz bottles of beer and eat pizza bites. Maybe we’ll even show this rad Whistler Blackcomb XXS video made by the resort.
Thanks Brian
This is such a bizarre story that I couldn’t ignore it. A woman was snowboarding Whistler/Blackcomb last year; she caught an edge, hit the ground and speed, and then slid over a cliff insuring her back, leg, and ribs. If I was a Canadian and found myself lying on the rocks in this situation, I assure you that while wiggling my toes to check for feeling, I would be thinking, “Thank god I have health insurance.” And the woman received the treatment she needed, but now the government is coming after the ski resort for having cliffs in the first place. Man, you’d think socialized medicine would mean the end of frivolous lawsuits, but that’s not the case. It’s not like ski resorts say, “Hey, we all have health insurance, let’s just cut corners and make everything really unsafe since it’s free to get fixed up at the hospital.”
