BH06
Member
Calgary Sun this morning.
Up to $14,000 for the machine, $300 for the helmet, at least as much again for a warm suit, boots and gloves.
Add another $350 for an avalanche beacon and the incidentals needed for a day in the mountains: Food, gas, beverages, maybe a hotel room.
It tallies up, this extreme sport called snowmobiling — it’s a pastime not suited for the faint of heart or faint of wallet.
On the other side of the coin is the vast pile of money needed to rescue sledders on the rare occasion something goes wrong — given manpower, helicopters and hospitals, it can run into the tens of thousands of dollars.
In short, a pile of money goes into snowmobiles, snowmobile culture, and snowmobile rescue.
Money everywhere — and yet somehow, there’s barely a drop for the organization responsible for the safety of Canada’s huge community of sledders.
The Canadian Avalanche Centre, the B.C.-based group charged with monitoring mountain safety and issuing daily slide warnings, is broke.
Last week, on the tail-end of a tumultuous fortnight which resulted in the avalanche deaths of three sledders and two skiers over two weekends in B.C., the CAC issued a quiet plea for help.
“Before the Boulder Mountain incident, I would estimate we were $10,000 in the red,” said John Kelly, operations manager of the Canadian Avalanche Centre.
“I’ve been asked by our board of directors to prepare a budget that brings us back in the black — and most of our expenditures are for salaries.”
At under $1 million, the CAC has a pitifully small budget for an outfit with the invaluable purpose of savings lives.
A total of $800,000 is spent by the avalanche centre every year, with $175,000 coming from the federal government, $150K from the province of B.C. and $100,000 from Alberta.
That’s $425,000: The rest is scraped together through charitable and corporate sponsorship.
The snowmobile industry, which reaps the lion’s share of benefit, contributes a paltry $10,000 a year, split between Bombardier and Yamaha.
Sledders themselves, through private donations, give about $2,000 — a shameful number, given that a single, clapped-out snowmobile costs more.
Cynics might say the number of sledders killed each year proves the snowmobile community isn’t benefiting from the daily avalanche bulletins, because they don’t read them.
And sure, to measure by the fatal fiasco at Boulder Mountain near Revelstoke earlier this month, when dozens were hit by a predictable slide, is to find a community lacking in common sense.
But that’s a discredit to the thousands of sledders who use the B.C. backcountry every weekend without mishap, in large part due to the excellent bulletins issued by the avalanche centre.
They read the reports, listen to the warnings, and come home safe. They don’t pay a dime towards the CAC service, but still.
A report released in January by the B.C. Coroner Service, after the deaths of 19 snowmobilers last winter, praised the CAC bulletins as accurate and effective. It pinpointed a lack of avalanche awareness as the major factor in slide fatalities — if all sledders bothered to read the CAC warnings, there’d be a fraction of the deaths.
It seems an easy way of having fewer body bags carted out of the mountains, and it’s why some connected to the sport are asking for even more avalanche warnings, posted near the hills and in hotels.
It’s a demand for extra service, just as Kelly is looking at possible layoffs and cutbacks.
The Boulder Mountain slide, which killed two Albertans, cost the CAC around $14,000 in overtime and operations, as staff were swarmed with questions and media requests in the wake of the avalanche.
Kelly says that’s on top of the existing shortfall.
Unless more money is found, the CAC is in serious trouble — a great irony, given the multimillion dollar industry that snowmobiles represent to B.C.
“I’ve heard it may even be in the billions, and almost nothing is invested into public safety,” said Kelly.
“It’s really tragic that is the case.”
michael.platt@sunmedia.ca
Up to $14,000 for the machine, $300 for the helmet, at least as much again for a warm suit, boots and gloves.
Add another $350 for an avalanche beacon and the incidentals needed for a day in the mountains: Food, gas, beverages, maybe a hotel room.
It tallies up, this extreme sport called snowmobiling — it’s a pastime not suited for the faint of heart or faint of wallet.
On the other side of the coin is the vast pile of money needed to rescue sledders on the rare occasion something goes wrong — given manpower, helicopters and hospitals, it can run into the tens of thousands of dollars.
In short, a pile of money goes into snowmobiles, snowmobile culture, and snowmobile rescue.
Money everywhere — and yet somehow, there’s barely a drop for the organization responsible for the safety of Canada’s huge community of sledders.
The Canadian Avalanche Centre, the B.C.-based group charged with monitoring mountain safety and issuing daily slide warnings, is broke.
Last week, on the tail-end of a tumultuous fortnight which resulted in the avalanche deaths of three sledders and two skiers over two weekends in B.C., the CAC issued a quiet plea for help.
“Before the Boulder Mountain incident, I would estimate we were $10,000 in the red,” said John Kelly, operations manager of the Canadian Avalanche Centre.
“I’ve been asked by our board of directors to prepare a budget that brings us back in the black — and most of our expenditures are for salaries.”
At under $1 million, the CAC has a pitifully small budget for an outfit with the invaluable purpose of savings lives.
A total of $800,000 is spent by the avalanche centre every year, with $175,000 coming from the federal government, $150K from the province of B.C. and $100,000 from Alberta.
That’s $425,000: The rest is scraped together through charitable and corporate sponsorship.
The snowmobile industry, which reaps the lion’s share of benefit, contributes a paltry $10,000 a year, split between Bombardier and Yamaha.
Sledders themselves, through private donations, give about $2,000 — a shameful number, given that a single, clapped-out snowmobile costs more.
Cynics might say the number of sledders killed each year proves the snowmobile community isn’t benefiting from the daily avalanche bulletins, because they don’t read them.
And sure, to measure by the fatal fiasco at Boulder Mountain near Revelstoke earlier this month, when dozens were hit by a predictable slide, is to find a community lacking in common sense.
But that’s a discredit to the thousands of sledders who use the B.C. backcountry every weekend without mishap, in large part due to the excellent bulletins issued by the avalanche centre.
They read the reports, listen to the warnings, and come home safe. They don’t pay a dime towards the CAC service, but still.
A report released in January by the B.C. Coroner Service, after the deaths of 19 snowmobilers last winter, praised the CAC bulletins as accurate and effective. It pinpointed a lack of avalanche awareness as the major factor in slide fatalities — if all sledders bothered to read the CAC warnings, there’d be a fraction of the deaths.
It seems an easy way of having fewer body bags carted out of the mountains, and it’s why some connected to the sport are asking for even more avalanche warnings, posted near the hills and in hotels.
It’s a demand for extra service, just as Kelly is looking at possible layoffs and cutbacks.
The Boulder Mountain slide, which killed two Albertans, cost the CAC around $14,000 in overtime and operations, as staff were swarmed with questions and media requests in the wake of the avalanche.
Kelly says that’s on top of the existing shortfall.
Unless more money is found, the CAC is in serious trouble — a great irony, given the multimillion dollar industry that snowmobiles represent to B.C.
“I’ve heard it may even be in the billions, and almost nothing is invested into public safety,” said Kelly.
“It’s really tragic that is the case.”
michael.platt@sunmedia.ca
