Bruce Allen led the BC Ministry of Transportation’s avalanche program out of Revelstoke for about 30 years, starting with its inception in the early-80s. Hailing from Ontario, he started his career on the Red Mountain Resort ski patrol before transitioning into highway avalanche control work. He was President of the Canadian Avalanche Association in 1999-00 and also played a key role in developing the CAA Avalanche Blasting Course.
Here is the transcript of our interview with Bruce Allen:
Hello. My name is Alex Cooper and I’m here on behalf of the Canadian Avalanche Association’s History Project. As part of the CAA’s 40th anniversary, we’re interviewing Past-presidents, staff, and other key figures in the Canadian avalanche industry. I’m here today with Bruce Allen, a former CAA President and long-time leader of the [BC Ministry of Transportation’s] Columbia Mountain avalanche control program. I’m here at his home in Revelstoke, B.C. Thank you for joining us Bruce.
Bruce Allen: You’re welcome.
The first question I’ve been asking everybody is, when was the first time you encountered or became aware of the phenomenon on avalanches?
Well, in my youth at Red Mountain… I remember the first time I decided to do an avalanche course. I was in Spain and I was crossing a slope of firm, which is a type of snow, and it collapsed. That scared the hell out of me, so I went, “Sure, I’ll get an avalanche course.”
The first avalanche I was chased by, I was skiing with some friends at Red Mountain after three weeks with no snow. I jumped into an avalanche path and the whole thing fractured around me. I realized it was failing because I was skiing but the snow wasn’t moving. The reason why it wasn’t moving was because it was moving relative to me. In other words, the whole slope was moving at the same time I was. So, I just went straight, went into the forest, and it didn’t catch me.
How old were you at the time?
I was in my early-20s.
You mentioned Red Mountain. Are you from Rossland or that area?
I grew up in Ontario, but I moved there when I was 20 to become a ski bum.
Did you grow up skiing in Ontario?
No. I moved to Red Mountain to learn to ski.
Oh! Why?
I had some friends that were going to go. They’d finished university and had some friends that had gone there and said it was a fantastic place. So, I went there. They’d only put in the big lift at Granite Mountain a few years before that. There was nobody there. It was days and days of powder of snow, with no one around. There weren’t very many ski bums. I stayed there for a decade.
About what year was this?
It was the winter of 72-73, I believe. Eventually, I went to Spain in ’78, or something like that, and came back, took an avalanche course from BCIT—the CAA did not exist at that time. Then I took a first aid course, because I figured if I’m going to be in the mountains, I better know something. I might have taken my Level 2, and that might have been in 1980. It was the late 70s—I can’t put out the year.
I took the Level 2. There’d been a big avalanche in Rossland that had caught a couple people, broke a girl’s femur and beat up another guy badly. The mountain decided they needed an avalanche program and they hired John Tweedy to start the avalanche program. A couple years after that, he hired me to be a ski patroller with him.
Were you working on the mountain when you were learning to ski?
No, I was just a ski bum. I had enough money that I could just go skiing.
I guess then, there wasn’t really a recreational course, so if you wanted to take an avalanche course, it was the professional ones being taught by Peter Schaerer.
It was Chris Stethem, Peter Schaerer, and Herb Bleuer that taught my first course.
Where was that?
I believe it was in Whistler.
That sounds right, from what I’ve heard.
It was a couple of years after that the CAA started, so I joined right away.
Were you at the first meetings in 1981?
Was that in Revelstoke? I was at an early meeting in Revelstoke.
I think the early one was in Vancouver, but I can double-check.
I think I was there, too.
What was it that interested you in avalanche work?
The fact that I’d been almost involved in a couple of them. I was involved in a really big one at Red Mountain where the whole bowl went. I was lucky because I got pushed into trees and was able to grab a tree. I guess I just became aware of avalanches and thought, “Let’s try this.” John Tweedy offering me the job, that got me into avalanche work.
Were there not a lot of other people around with that kind of training?
No, there weren’t. I already had my courses, I had industrial first aid, so I was hireable.
Were you involved in starting Red Mountain’s avalanche program?
I was hired about three years after it was started. Maybe two years.
What kind of systems did they have in place when you started?
It was like a regular ski patrol. Go drive the corpses off the battlefield. They had figured out the avalanche paths and had routes. They used hand-charges for explosives control. We did the weather observations and John did the avalanche forecasting. We’d go up the lift in the dark, get the explosives together, and at first light, start out on our routes.
With a backpack full of explosives?
With a backpack full of explosives.
And you were in your mid-20s at this point?
Exactly. It was fun. Money for nothing, chicks for free.
How did you transition from that into highway work? I understand that happened pretty early.
I worked for ski patrol for three or four years, and then I decided to take a guide’s course. I took the guide’s course and passed—assistant winter guide. CMH offered me a job, so I went up to Valemount and worked there. And then the recession in the 80s hit and so I didn’t have a guiding position. I worked in support for a year.
Again, John Tweedy had moved into highways. He’d been hired at Kootenay Pass and he told me there’s a job in Revelstoke I should apply for, and there was one in Lillooet. I applied for the one in Lillooet, I applied for the one in Revelstoke, and I got the one in Revelstoke,
I know the highway programs were started in the mid-1970s. Around what year did you come here?
I think around ‘82-83, something like that.
So, the program was still quite young then?
It was brand new. There were a couple of guys doing some observations and they’d do profiles. Dean Handley and Brian Abear and Norm Fachino. They might have had a basic avalanche course, like an operations course for highways, but it really wasn’t much of a program. So, they put me in there and said, “Fly at her.” I said, “What do I do?”
Geoff Freer was running the highways program at this point, and he just picked 20 spots on the map and said, “Do a profile here every couple of weeks, do weather observations at these locations.” I think we had four places where we did weather observations. We had no remote weather stations, we had nothing like that, so you’d drive up and down the highway looking at the storm, going, “Oh my God! This is no good.”
You’d take weather observations at the weather stations, record them, and figure it out from there. You’re 2,500 feet or 4,500 feet below the start zones with a thermometre in your hand trying to go, “What the hell’s that one (the temperature) up there?”
It was a huge program.
Before this, when there was a big storm cycle, a big avalanche cycle, they would watch the avalanches run…
And close the highway.
And hope no drivers got caught?
There was a huge avalanche in Terrace, the North Route Café, and that started the avalanche program. Highways hired Geoff Freer and Peter Schaerer as consultants. They went around and figured out and catalogued all the avalanche paths, and figured out where there were problems. Revelstoke came up as one.
I just figured it out as I went. The first year I was here, I told my boss there was going to be an avalanche cycle and we should close the highway, and he said no. They were really against closing the highways at that point. I phoned Geoff and said, “What do I do?” He said, “Write a report.”
I didn’t know how to write a report. So, I wrote a report and sent it to Victoria. I got a call back saying, “What did you write that report for?”
“Well, I don’t know what to write.”
But that fellow moved on and he got a better job elsewhere, and I got a new district highways manager. Liability-wise, you couldn’t say to your expert, “I’m not going follow your advice.” I didn’t know what I was doing really. I just figured it out as best I could.
In that situation, you knew there was a big storm coming?
I knew it was going happen.
And it did happen?
Yes. Forecasting avalanches isn’t really that hard. You just have to look at things and go, “This is not good.”
The problem is: do you close a highway or keep it open? It costs an enormous amount of money to close a highway. It’s tens of thousands of dollars an hour. Each truck is $150/hour to run a truck. If that truck doesn’t move, they’re losing money. In some of our big storms, I kept 600 trucks in Revelstoke sitting, waiting for the highway to open. That’s an enormous amount of money. Millions of dollars every time you close the highway.
The problem with highways is you want people to be safe, but you want the highway to be open. But at some point, you have to close the highway. But when do you close it? Well, you close the highway when you think there will be a big enough avalanche that will adversely affect traffic. You can have avalanches hitting the highway, that’s acceptable. It’s just they can’t be big avalanches. Then the problem is once you close it, when do you open it? That’s even harder.
I remember I interviewed you 10 or so years ago and I think you gave me a similar line. “Closing the highway is easy. Opening it again is the hard part of the job.”
Going back to when you started, what did you put in place for avalanche control? You know there’s a storm coming, you can shut the highway. But in terms of creating avalanche control programs, how did you go about doing that and figuring out where to drop bombs?
It’s a fun story, because when I first started. Geoff Freer didn’t come from an avalanche control background. He worked at Rogers Pass with the NRC (National Research Council) as an assistant. They wouldn’t let me do avalanche control at first. I had to forecast natural avalanches. I couldn’t go out and shoot them; all I could do was close the highway. It was very difficult because you couldn’t test and see if it was unstable. Eventually, we had an avalanche that scared everyone enough that they decided to start explosive control.
What was that?
It was an avalanche in a little path out east called Panther and it came down and hit a few cars. I’d been asking to do it. “Let’s get some explosives.” But they didn’t want to do it. I got pretty good at forecasting natural avalanches. I think the strategy was really good, because it really developed my skills to forecast natural avalanches. I was forced to.
Then we started doing explosives control. We picked the main performers. We’d done lots of avalanche observations. We’d close the highway and watch them smoke the highway. We knew where the avalanches were happening. When we started doing helicopter control, we set up some sites to do Avalauncher work. We had regular positions. We had an Avalauncher on a trailer and we could mount it at an exact location, jack it up, get it level, and fire it blind. But the Avalauncher was terribly inaccurate. You’d be looking at where it was supposed to go in the dark and it would explode somewhere else.
Around when was that you started bombing?
It had to be three or four of five years, maybe more. I can’t remember. It was a while.
What was your jurisdiction? Was it just right around Revelstoke, or were you also doing Kicking Horse?
The area was huge. It was 300 kilometres of highway. It was west 50 kilometres, right to the Glacier Park boundary. The three snowsheds you drive through going to Glacier are all provincial. The Perry River, 50 kilometres west. Then Trout Lake, Galena Pass, and all the way to Mica, which is 150 kilometres north. Then the Kicking Horse Canyon as well. Quite an interesting program, because there was a real diversity of problems within that area.
That’s what they put you in charge of when you showed up? Were you alone, or were there other people?
I had these surveyors that worked with me the first year They were surveyors in the summer and they did a little bit of avalanche work in the winter. And then I got an assistant. I told Geoff I needed someone to go into the mountains with me and ski into the start zones. So, I had an assistant come and work with me. And then they realized there’s an enormous amount of work here, so the crew grew over time.
And now it’s one of the biggest programs. I wonder where it ranks, as far as the Ministry of Transportation ranks.
I think it is.
That’s a lot of highway—especially Three Valley Gap and the snowsheds, but there’s also all those other areas.
When you’re forecasting avalanches 150 km away, it’s a totally different environment. And huge avalanches too. Seventy kilometres north there was big avalanche paths. And at Downie there’s big avalanche paths. It’s interesting, because I travel those highways now, do a lot of bike riding. I look at some of those start zones and they’ve all grown in. Over the time I’ve been here, a lot have grown in. The forest has come back.
Is that a result of avalanche control?
Partly, I think. On 23 North, that was a new highway. One of the big avalanche paths up there, when they were clearing the debris for the right of way, they burnt the slope above the highway. So now here’s this huge new avalanche path because they burnt the forest away. But all that’s grown back.
Galena Pass produces really big avalanches, and it’s just always been there, it always will be there. It’s quite a bizarre place to forecast avalanches for. You get a lot of surprises out of there,
Why is that?
It faces south. It’s glide avalanches, so they’re not instabilities in the snowpack, they’re instabilities at the ground-snowpack interface. They’re very hard to forecast.
You don’t know when they’re going to go.
You keep an eye on them, see what the glide cracks are doing. We used to try to bomb them, shoot them with helicopter bombs. I noticed in summer a lot of craters in the slope, so I stopped doing that. We used 50 kg. We tried littler 25 kg, but just wasn’t able to push it. They’re just hard to do this. They don’t want to go when you want them to go.
I think it’s fascinating starting a program from the ground up. You mentioned there was no weather stations.
There was four. One at 50 Mile. I don’t think there was one at Mica, there might have been. At Three Valley, Albert Canyon, and Trout Lake. The weather station was at Trout Lake, not at Galena Pass, which was a ways-away.
So, you have to establish more weather stations. Is that something you did?
One of the big steps forward was we got into remote weather observation technology. So, they put one in Three Valley, they put one up by Corbin Pass, they put one in Mica, and they put one at Caribou Ridge. They put one on the Kicking Horse. (There was also one at Galena Pass).
So, I started getting this electronic data. You’d have to go to a little computer and work DOS to get data. It was quite interesting. That really helped a lot, to be able to see what’s happening in the start zones. And then we got so we could read that data at home—that was pretty cool. You didn’t have to go to the office, but you still did a lot of driving, enormous amount of driving. The number of times I’ve driven to Three Valley and back, I could not tell you, it’s thousands.
Or going up to Mica to see what’s going on there.
I could at times, but not during a storm. We worked with the plow operators. They’re a very significant input into the forecast because they’re observing what’s going on. I would be talking to the plow operators all the time, finding out what’s going on, what they were seeing.
How much it snowed, the rate of snowfall?
The rate of snowfall. Did they see any avalanches hit the ditch. All that sort of thing. I had a good working relationship with those guys. I think it’s really important to treat them with respect. They do a really hard job. I can’t believe they can do it actually. To be out in the roads, driving in a blizzard.
It’s terrifying. Especially if there’s other traffic on the road. I hate driving in snowstorms.
I did a lot of it.
Meanwhile, while you’re establishing this program, what was your involvement in the CAA, in the 80s.
I was a member and I would go to every meeting. They would have annual meetings. I would go, I would learn lots, and pay attention at technical sessions. I got more involved. I guess at one point I decided I should be on the executive, I should help out. I joined the executive as a Member-at-large, then as the Sec-Treasurer. I can’t believe they let me do that.
Eventually they needed a President, so I volunteered to do that.
It was 99-2000 when you were President. You came on as President after the two Als—Al Munro and Al Evenchick—died in an avalanche. That was a very important event for the industry. What was it like in the aftermath of that incident?
It was a real eye-opener that people die at work. Because they were both highways workers, it was shocking to us. We all knew that the possibility was there. I was chased by avalanches while I was at work at times. You get into a place and go, “This is not good, let’s be very careful here.” And having avalanches fracture off your feet and stuff like that. We knew it was a possibility.
I got called the night before that the guys had not returned from work, so we knew something was up. The next day we’re in a storm, so while I was at work. I actually was seriously considering explosives control—we used helicopters a lot. We’d spend $100,000 a year on helicopters, so that’s a lot of flying.
That day I looked up and it was really bad weather, and I just went, “I’m not going to go, I’m not doing that today.” Because we just lost two guys. I was pretty sure they were lost. They hadn’t come home. I blew that mission off and said we’re not going. If we have to, we’ll close the highway. We’re not going to fly around in bad weather. The head of the snow avalanche section at that time, Jack Bennetto, I told him. He said that was a good decision, you can’t lose anyone else.
Highways was really good. Highways was a wonderful organization to work for. I can’t say enough about it. They took all the avalanche technicians and their assistants and they flew them to the memorial service at Pine Pass and made us all go to the service. I think that was a really brilliant idea on the part of the executive to have all the avalanche technicians go. We had to stand there and watch the children and the wives cry, and it just smacked you up the side of the face. You can’t do this. This can’t happen because of the grief and the cost of everything. I thought that was a brilliant idea on their part because it pushed our face right in the mud. It really opened your eyes.
Did it change things a lot on the ground?
It changed them somewhat. At some point we started having to do more formal backcountry analysis as opposed to highway analysis. We had to write it down and discuss it. Sit around and have a meeting and decide what our stability was for the day, what level risk we would take, and all that sort of thing. It affected operations. I don’t know how much it affected the entire industry, but I think it opened lots of people’s eyes. That was a shock to have.
Even though you’re out there most days in avalanche terrain, you’re thinking we’re making safe decision.
The key is decisions made in the field can be different than the decision made in an office, in that you have to sit down and analyze and rationally figure things out, and then write it down. And then that’s your plan and you have to stick to it, unless you go more conservative. You can always go more conservative, but you should not go less conservative. Because when you’re in the field, it’s the old powder bug biting at your ass. Go ski, go ski, go ski! That’s when the biases come in and the bad decisions are made. I thought that was a good move by highways to make us do that. I don’t know how soon that came after that accident, but that’s probably a result of that accident.
And you were CAA President, so there was probably reverberations throughout the industry.
There was. The was lots of talk. I think the front was highways. They were the front and the CAA sat in the back and tried to pass on information and help out. I think it’s interesting. Bruce Jamieson did a study of risk at work for avalanche workers. The highest risk is driving to work or driving on the job. Your odds of getting hurt or killed are way higher in the vehicle than on the mountain.
As an aside, after I heard that lecture from Bruce, I made all my crew take a defensive driving course, including myself. I encourage everyone who works on the highway to take one. It’s 101, basically. I guess everyone must have sat down and analyzed their procedures and what they were doing, and all that.
And you did the same here?
Of course.
What procedures changed?
I think we became more conservative, you know. I could have skied an enormous amount in my job. We didn’t ski much. People are surprised—you’re an avalanche technician and you didn’t ski much? Yeah, we skied a little here and there. You have to. You have to get your feet in the snow and figure things out. But we were very conservative. I never skied the centre of an avalanche path, ever, at work. I always skied right next to the trees. People go, “Oh, the snow’s not good.” Horse****! The snow is just as good next to the trees as in the middle of the avalanche path, but you’re way safer next to the forest. Things like that, we just were much more conservative.
I remember flying north once and there were two tracks down the centre of an avalanche path—my crew. We had a serious talk about that that evening. Who the hell did that? Think about what you’re doing.
You’re not out there for fun. You’re working.
They (Al and Al) should have never been where they were at work. They should have never been there. That was our philosophy after that—don’t be there. Be very conservative.
I was told you were very involved getting the blasting procedures and courses going. Tell me about your involvement in that. Why you got involved and why it became important to you.
The industry had an accident in the States. An explosive charge went off between her knees. It seemed to me, this is my opinion, one could question it, but I think she didn’t have enough training. As a result of that, explosive industry manufacturers didn’t want to sell explosives to the avalanche industry anymore because we seemed like cowboys. Who skis with explosives in their backpack and lights and then throws them? It’s kind of like Loony Tunes.
They were cutting us off. They weren’t going to supply fuses to us anymore. That was a serious shock because that’s our main tool for controlling avalanches. We kind of fought the battle. People like Chris Stethem and others took the battle to the federal agencies. Actually, the CAA paid thousands of dollars to do testing of explosives by the National Research Council and the explosive branch, and they proved that the cap—because with explosives the cap is the most dangerous part to the charge—the explosives, you can bang on the table, you can shoot with a gun probably and it won’t go off. They proved that cap was far safer (in the explosives charge when you’re carrying it because it’s padded).
What they wanted to do was put the charges together above the start zone, before you threw them so you wouldn’t ski with them. They would be armed. You wouldn’t have the cap and fuse in the explosive when you were skiing. They proved to us, through their experiments, that we were right. The cap was safer in the explosives than out of the explosives. Rather than carrying them separately, keep them together. Because they’re not going to go off. If you crash with a pack, it’s not going to go off. It’s just cocooned in there. It’s padded and all that.
People within the avalanche association fought the battle and we were allowed to use fuses, but the thing that scared the industry was they thought we were a bunch of cowboys and we didn’t know what we were doing. We were just willy-nilly throwing explosives around.
I was one of the really strong proponents for education. One of the strengths of the CAA has always been standards. We’re world-renowned because we had standards. You had to do things a certain way. You had to observe sky cover a certain way. You had to measure avalanches a certain way. There was always standards. I believed in standards strongly because they gave us consistent communication. They allowed you to look back at records and understand them. And you were able to communicate better, and so I really believed that should happen with explosives. We should be doing everything the same, and it should be done right according to what the manufacturers and the explosives community said. We should all follow procedures. The only way that could happen was if you train people.
One of the reasons we got to use explosives again—fuses and caps—was because we said we would train our people, and the explosives manufacturers said OK. They were able to see how we were training people, to what standard. We were doing a good job. What they found out was the avalanche industry was far above other industries in how safe we are—how clean are magazines are, how we keep these standards. Part of that is because we have an explosives course. They’re the rules and we follow rules. We seem to be rule followers for some reason. We’re not rebels. I was really behind training people properly so we don’t have any accidents, so we don’t endanger the ability to do avalanche control.
Beforr the course, how were people trained?
On site, by their employers.
So, you would be training the people working under you how to properly handle them?
So that could vary.
Again, because I was mentored by John Tweedy, he was very anal about all this stuff. I was right into doing it the way you’re supposed to.
But standards could vary so much. You might do it one way, but another highway program is doing it another.
Or ski hills are doing something else. Or helicopter operators.
Time is money, so everyone wants to do things their way that’s quicker and easier. No, it can’t be like that. It’s going to be one way. Everyone does it the same, and that same way is approved by the manufacturers, by workman’s compensation. Workman’s Compensation is heavily involved in this as well. We got a lot of help from a lot of people. I really believed in it and started teaching the courses the year they came out.
Do you remember what year this was?
I don’t remember.
I don’t have the records either, but I’m sure I can find out.
I found it very interesting doing it. It was fun. It was nice to take people who are rookies and help them come along and gain their experience. Because I’d use explosives, I have lots of stories.
Can you share one of your explosives stories.
I don’t know if I should. (chuckles)
I’ll tell you one from a long time ago, when I was at Red Mountain. You should be fully aware, fully able to do your job. There should be nothing that’s going to interfere with what you’re doing.
We had a visiting patroller come. The lead of the blasting team went down and set a track. We had to do this long traverse and you go as fast you could so you go across the flat. So, he sets the track and I was behind him and my ski got outside his track and I got messed up and eventually crashed. This visiting patroller was right on my ass and he hit me in the arm. I was hurting bad. We got up together and went down to start the route. I’m surprised I didn’t break my arm.
John Schick, who was the team leader, said, “You throw your charge there, and you throw yours by the bushes, and I’ll throw mine by the rock.” He goes, “OK, One, two, three.”
We light our fuses, I throw my charge and he throws his. He looks and me and says, “Wrong bush! Dig a hole.”
I didn’t throw it far enough. I threw it into the wrong bush because I was right hurting. There we are digging a hole into the snow— thank God snow’s a very good insulator. So, you get down into that snow, you don’t feel the shockwave.
There’s an example of you have to be fully aware, no impediments to what you’re doing to be doing this kind of work. At that point, we probably should have reassessed and gone, “OK, what are we going to here?” But we were both young and crazy.
It’s the kind of thing, you’re young, want to do your job, maybe show you’re tough and capable.
We’re doing a job, you’re centred on doing a job.
You’re not thinking your arm hurts and you can’t huck a 90 MPH fastball right now.
I know other stories from the industry. There’s certain rules. Like, if you’re doing explosive control with AMX or something, you should have the bag between your knees and the fuse coming out of that bag right in front of you. I had an associate that didn’t do that. He had a pile of explosives beside him on the seat. He lit the fuse and threw the explosives out and went, *makes sniffing sound.* “It smells like smoke in here.”
He looked over and there’s the fuse burning beside him. He threw the wrong charge because he had them all piled together. That was a good example to students that you put the charge between your knees and you see everything that’s going on. Don’t just take a fuse and light it. Be concentrated on that fuse goes to that bag and that’s the bag I’m throwing. That’s a good example of learning on the job.
I guess that person realized quickly to get rid of the proper explosive.
And now there’s an explosive charge out there laying in the snow you got to deal with, and that’s a bitch.
I read the AvSar course was started when you were President. What do you remember developing that?
A lot of those courses were done by the Educational Committee. The Executive would approve the course. “Let’s have a course for this.” The Educational Committee would hire consultants and experts in the field, and then they would develop a course and bring it back.
Avalanche search & rescue was always part of the courses. The courses got more and more specialized. I think people realized that avalanche rescue is quite complicated, so maybe we should break it out as a separate course and do it that way. I can remember talking about doing it, developing a course. I didn’t develop it, the Education Committee did the development. There’s some really good people on those committees.
One thing I noticed when you were President, that’s when there was the avalanche in northern Quebec happened that hit a New Year’s Party. Avalanche Quebec was started after that, but also I read some things about the Eastern Canada Avalanche Project. So, it looks like the CAA was getting more involved in eastern Canada, in Newfoundland. What do you remember about those conversations and expanding the CAA out east, which must have been virgin territory?
After the avalanche happened in northern Quebec, contact was made with the CAA to have someone go out and investigate it. Bruce Jamieson and I can’t recall who else went. They went out there and looked into it and talked to the authorities. There was a conversation that went on between the Quebec government and CAA. We were quite open to working with them. They had people touring in the Chic Chocs and places like that. They had people that were aware. I think there’s a lot of Quebecois people who would come to our courses. They’d take their knowledge back. We encouraged them. I think the CAA even contributed to forming that branch.
The CAA has always been positive in expanding its knowledge, giving out their knowledge, being open with their knowledge, and helping people. There was no debate. We’ll help them, no problem. We were very supportive. And it’s developed quite well. They’ve done a great job out there.
And, also some basic avalanche awareness programs started in Newfoundland around then.
I think there was contact in the past where people asked to have education done. I think that’s when we started doing snowmobile courses. In Newfoundland they didn’t do a lot of skiing, but they did a lot of snowmobiling. I think the instructors had to go out there and learn how to drive snowmobiles. My understanding is Newfoundland is flat with some river valleys and all the snow blows off the flats into the valleys.
That’s what it looks like to me. The pictures I’ve seen of Gros Morne show big plateaus, big valleys, steep slopes, and lots of wind.
Those seem to be the major things while your President, but I’m wondering if you remember any other issues or thing that came to mind that were notable challenges or successes during that period.
We had some growing pains. We tried to hire an executive director. That’s one of the big things that happened during my term. We had to hire an executive director, and then we had to get rid of him. That was a huge amount of time that went into personnel issues.
This was after Alan Dennis?
We hired a fellow and it didn’t work out, so we had to un-hire him. That took a lot of time. Personnel issues are always a hard part.
Who did you hire?
I think it was Joe.
Joe would have been later. Was it Clair?
That’s right. We had Clair. He’s a born bureaucrat really, but a real smart guy and he had a lot of experience. Clair did a great job.
We hired Clair. The President, on some things, just follows the orders of the Executive. Everyone sits around the table and argues. “Ok, I’ll do it.”
I didn’t ask, but were you tapped or asked to be President, or did you volunteer?
I volunteered. I’d been on the board long enough and they needed somebody. I said I’ll do it, so I did it for a year, and then Diny took over.
Diny took over, but then we hired Clair so she had to step down. And then Bill Mark took that position.
Being the CAA, we’re a little bit different. We hired a purple-haired girl for President. I thought that was good.
That was a very good executive. We had Bob Sayer and Diny and Bill Mark, Dan McDonald. We had some really good people. The nice thing about being on the executive and being the President is you get to work with these pretty smart people. Very few dummies in the avalanche industry. I don’t think you’d survive. You work with diverse people, with diverse experiences. It’s quite stimulating. Id’ recommend it to anybody to get involved.
That’s what I’ve noticed about the industry is there’s a lot of really smart people who could be contributing to a medical field or something, but they love snow and they get involved in the avalanche industry and put their brains towards that. So, it benefits people who share that passion.
Exactly. And it is quite a passion.
When I worked for the government, it wasn’t rare to do a 24-hour day during storm cycles. The pay clerks couldn’t believe that you could work. I had one shift that I worked 22 hours, two hours sleep, worked 20 hours, got three hours sleep, and then worked a 17-hour shift. And during the 17-hour shift, I was throwing explosives out of a helicopter. We just didn’t have enough people in the program. You didn’t need them all the time. That takes dedication. It just does.
I want to keep covering the main elements of the CAA. We talked about training courses, but the InfoEx is the other main part.
That was a really big thing. That was quite a step forward. It was a very positive thing. There was a lot of debate and work with getting people to agree to share information. Everyone wants to hoard information. They don’t want to talk about the mess-ups or mistakes or any of that. That InfoEx really gave us a broad perspective of what was happening around you. It’s a really good tool.
When you started here, were you talking to Selkirk Tangiers or CMH at all?
No. Nobody shared information. I talked to Rogers Pass sometimes. Walter and Fred were really good with me. I was blown away. Those guys were the masters. They were the Jedi. I was just this rookie. They were really good with me. If I ever contacted them, they were quite helpful and quite open. I was quite impressed with them. They were really quite good. Peter Schaerer was like that as well.
It looks like it wasn’t until 1990 when the InfoEx came into being. Where the technology was there, but also the funding. The Canadian Avalanche Centre was started. Were you fully on board?
Highways was in there like a dirty shirt. For me it was great, because then I had more information. Because I had such a diverse area, I had more information to deal with.
But another report you had to type it all up and fax it in?
Yeah, that’s a bitch. I actually had that conversation once with someone. We were in an InfoEx meeting and people were complaining about everybody not getting their information in all the time. I made the mistake of saying, “After I’ve worked 20 hours, the last thing I want to do is sit down and fill out more information.”
I got **** for that. I was supposed to do it anyways.
But it’s such a good success for the industry. It’s part of the standard workflow.
The interesting thing is the Americans have now got on board. It was quite new. Sharing your information. Who would think of doing that? Sharing your mess-up. Yeah, that was quite a positive step, for sure.
You would have seen it evolve from the very beginning, to becoming a computerized system, with internet and satellite internet.
I think it was started with fax at first.
The reports would come in by fax and one or two people would compile the information and fax it out by midnight, so when the morning people came for the morning meeting, they’d have a fax with the latest observations.
It was pretty crude. That tells you how long ago it happened. I saw a lot of changes. One of the big changes was remote avalanche control.
I was going to ask you about that. I guess getting the systems installed.
Well, that happened right after I left.
But you must have got the ball rolling on those?
I was involved. It was my final year. I was in meetings for planning to build the things. I was up surveying the ground. If you walk about Three Valley—I don’t recommend you do it—but it’s a beautiful, beautiful area up above those cliffs. It’s all moss and thinning forests. We went through and examined all the start zones and did that.
I talked to the consultants. I remember being in a meeting and they only wanted to build a certain amount. I said, “Well, then don’t build anything.” They went, “Why?” I said, “The highway’s going to be closed anyway. You gotta build them all or don’t build them.” We were arguing about one path. They didn’t want to build one there. I said it was going to close the highway. They wanted to look at the data. One of the people came back and said I was right. Of course, after that long, you know what’s going on.
Was I here when it started?
It was 2016-17, I think (when the first Wyssen Towers were installed in Three Valley Gap).
Probably not. I retired in 2013, but I came back and helped a little bit.
But the first ones, the one out east in the Laurie, that was the Avalanche Guard. That was a bitch to fly in there (to do avalanche control) because you’re flying into white. You’re in a storm, you’re in a bowl that’s white-on-white inside a ping pong ball. Being able to sit on the highway, push the button and have the avalanches come down was so nice, as opposed to flying in a helicopter.
I guess flying in a helicopter is exciting a few times, but then the thrill wears off.
Treetop to treetop. I did that lots.
If you look back, remote weather stations were a huge step. InfoEx was a huge step. Remote avalanche control was a huge step. These were the steps that happened. Being able to look at your data, I can’t remember the program. It was one thing to have the data, but when you had to communicate by DOS, that was a bit of a bitch. But when you got graphics… I got a computer at home plugged in beside my bed, so I would wake up, look at the data, and go back to sleep. The graphics just helped it so much. It was pretty cool being able to do it that way, right at your fingertips, in the middle of the night.
And now they’ve got their iPad and drive to Three Valley Gap and press a few buttons.
With the new systems, you can lay in bed on your phone and push the button and they go off. You just send the boys out to close the highway and push the button in your bedroom.
I guess the techs and the forecaster stays in the office.
*chuckles*
I always thought RACS were more recent, the last 10-15 years. I was surprised to learn the first GAZEX were installed in the 90s. They were much older than I expected.
But they’ve gotten better.
Now they’re everywhere.
They’re becoming everywhere.
You have to really have control in your closures with those things because somebody can be in your start zones.The one they have in Three Valley, the Wyssen Tower, I was heavily involved the planning for that, and the debates on what we should do. That was the one I wanted and other people wanted gas systems, i.e., O’Bellx or Gazex, or stuff like that. When we opened the bids, it was no debate. Wyssen Tower was way cheaper and it was very effective. And it is. It’s a great system.
If you ever can ask Chad (Hemphill) to go out when they’re going to shoot Three Valley, especially at night. You can go out behind the hotel and stand on that peninsula. It’s quite impressive to stand there in the dark and there’s flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, and then boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And the whole valley echoes. You see the ghost avalanches pouring off the bluffs. It’s pretty cool.
I remember going out there in 2011-12. I’d only been in Revelstoke for a couple of years. I think I went out with Val Visotsky. We went to the hotel. It was the winter Eagle Pass Heliskiing was staging out the hotel. It was grim. It was dark and grey. It was late in the day. It was 4 o’clock in January and the wind was howling. We watched the helicopter fly up, then heard the boom and watched the avalanches come down. It was all pretty impressive to watch, but it felt like such a bleak spot.
It is. It’s actually interesting. I think people underestimated (Three Valley Gap). Even Peter Schaerer, the first time he saw an avalanche cycle (in Three Valley), he went, “I didn’t think this happened here.” It’s kind of a geographic anomaly in that, a topographical anomaly. There’s two big valleys coming together and all the air squeezes through. Wap Valley comes in and the valley from Sicamous comes and they combine and squeeze through Three Valley Gap. A little narrow gap with 8,000-foot mountains surrounding it. So, the weather is so severe there, it’s just wild what goes on. They you have this 2,500 ft bluff full of gullies above the highway that fall directly on the highway.
I know this past winter they had a controlled size 4.5 or possibly even size five avalanche come down at the Jack Macdonald or Laurie snowsheds (note: it was Jack Macdonald). Did you ever experience avalanches like that? Just shockingly large, beyond your expectations?
I started a class five out of Lanark and that was quite interesting. There’s East Lanark and West Lanark. West Lanark shoots right down on the shed. East Lanark comes down, does a dog-leg and hits West Lanark perpendicular. And the avalanches from there, they come down and they hit a wall and then have to turn to go over the shed. They go up and I’ve seen a powder cloud go 1,000 feet in the air. Just hit the wall and go straight up. It’s wild to see.
But one of the best avalanches I tell people about is I was shooting Jack Macdonald with helicopter explosive charges. The charges are going off and I see this fracture line and I look and I go, “That’s weird.” Something’s weird. I can’t figure it out. I see this black line go across the start zone, and it’s jumping ridges. There’s a bunch of gullies in there. It’s jumping ridges. A black crack shoots across, and another black crack. A black crack—that’s weird.
What I realized was that snowpack was going to the ground. Usually, avalanches are white-on-white. You have a fracture line, there’s white below the fracture line, and white at the fracture line. This had gone to the ground and the black crack was the ground. I could see the ground as it was failing and these huge avalanches that blew down and across the snowshed and up the other valley. It affected the railway. It was quite wild. That was a total eye opener.
I’m not an expert, but I understand the principal of avalanche control is to bring down small avalanches so you don’t get the really big ones, so I imagine you get those big surprise ones…
You can shoot all you want. If it’s not ready to go, it’s not going to go. Yeah, you try and shoot the little ones. But also, you don’t want to be out there just hucking explosives if you don’t have to. You can shoot little avalanches, but if that avalanche path is never going to make the highway, why shoot it?
When you’re spending several thousand dollars an hour on helicopters…
Exactly. Sometimes they get away on you. Sometimes conditions just get right. That storm, we had two metres of snow in 18 days, so imagine how tired the crew was that time. Two metres, if you’re anywhere where two metres of snow falls, there’s an avalanche hazard. *chuckles*
That’s a lot of loading.
Yeah, I saw some pretty weird things. You throw the bombs out. You go, “I didn’t mean to do that.” *chuckles*
My buddy Rob Hemming who worked for me—was an excellent assistant, really good, went on to work at Rogers Pass and become a forecaster—he was shooting one day. We were trying to get the highway open; we had it closed. I said to him, “We got to be seen to be doing something, so go out and start bombing the low elevation paths.”
It was storming, you couldn’t see much. It was poor, poor flying. Start the Downie, start Silver Creek, and shoot your way east and get as high as you can and let’s see what you can get out.
He started shooting and eventually it cleared enough that he was able to get up in Lanark. He threw one bag and the bag hitting the slope started a Class 4 avalanche. Didn’t even go off, just hit the slope and started this avalanche. That was pretty wild.
I’ll start wrapping things up, but can you talk about your involvement with the CAA over the years after you were President. You were teaching blasting courses, but did you teach other courses?
I didn’t teach a lot. I taught highway personnel. Yes, I did teach some courses. I taught the industry course.
Resource and Transportation Avalanche Management?
I taught those. I don’t know if I taught the Level 1 or not. With the job, I found it hard to get away from the job. To commit to taking a week off and going and teaching a course, we just didn’t have enough people. Some people are able to do it, but I don’t know if their programs were as active.
Is there any reason you only did the one year as President?
Because you’re only allowed five years on the executive. I’d had four years as a Director-at-large, then Secretary-Treasurer. I only had one year left on my term. And then I did a year as Past-president and that bothered people. I didn’t know it would bother people, but no one likes the old guy around the table.
How did you stay involved with the CAA until your retirement?
I taught explosives courses and I would always go to the meeting and I’d always speak up. It drives me crazy to go to these meetings and they’re debating these things and no one says ****. Come on guys, no one speaks up. Got a question? How about asking it? I’d always try to liven the conversation up. “How about this, guys? Anyone think of this?” I was still active at the meetings. When I retired, I decided just to leave the industry. Thirty years of 24-hour days, getting summers off, I just decided I’d become a Retired Member, stand back, and take it in.
Don’t become a consultant or anything like that?
People asked me to, but I’d had enough. They asked me to be on search and rescue, but I couldn’t do it. I’d been on call too often for too long. I wanted to walk away from everything and lead a normal life.
What do you think is the biggest accomplishment of the CAA over it’s 40-year history?
I think the educational courses. They train people to a really high level, standard. I think that’s the greatest accomplishment, that they standardized the industry. They’ve been a world leader. You could thank people like Peter Schaerer and Bruce Jamieson for helping set the standards. I think they’ve been a voice for the worker. I.e., take the explosive issue. We had to do battle with the explosive manufacturers. Not really battle, but we had to work with them. The CAA was part of that. Because we had that organization, we were able to push back and represent people.
They’ve helped an enormous amount of people. Everyone from the people of Quebec and Newfoundland to the Worker’s Compensation Board. They’ve been the face that interacted with the Worker’s Compensation Board and kept the expectations reasonable.
They set standards and I think those standards are the biggest accomplishment of the CAA. When you look at America, everyone thinks America is so wonderful and progressive, but the CAA, when I was President, we had 10-times the budget the American Avalanche Association had. How can a country with 10 percent of the people have 10 times as great a budget for their avalanche association? The reason is, if you talk to the Americans, the Idaho guys do one thing and California guys do one thing and Wyoming guys do one things. But Canada, they all do the same. We’re able to talk to each other. We have the language and all that.
The CAA has represented the workers and set standards and helped with communication, the InfoEx, and all those things. It’s helped the industry grow and become reputable. And that’s really important. And all those things in the end protect the worker, and the public. It’s that commitment to the public, too. I was always industry-oriented and I did support going public, but I was one of the voices that said, “Wait a second. This can’t cost the association. We can’t afford to float the public. The public has to kick in, right?”
But once we committed, the industry gives that information to the public avalanche bulletin. They don’t sell it. They give it away. That’s really important. It’s always been about public safety. Whatever we do, it’s always public safety. I think part of the CAA’s role is protecting the worker, helping the worker do his job well, so that’s really important work.
You’ve been retired for close to a decade, but do you have any thoughts the CAA should be prepared to deal with in the future?
I think keeping up with technology is the big one. I guess education is one of the big ones. We’re fighting a battle. I don’t think people think of this, but we’re fighting a media battle. If you go on the internet, people will have videos of challenging the avalanche, or whatever, and we have to balance that, with, “Hey, it’s only turns, it’s only powder snow, it’s not worth your life.”
This **** about driving your Ski-doo straight up something so you get an avalanche and racing down to see if you can outrace it, that’s silly. It’s only snow. It’s not worth your life. There’s a glorification on YouTube and places like this about avalanches and the challenge is surviving them. Slow down kid, we’re only playing here. This is not serious, this is not really important. You can go skiing tomorrow. That whole trying to educated people to think of their biases and think of their reasons for risking it all, that’s part of what the challenges are.
But technology is changing radically, and it’s going to get better. I think eventually we’ll probably get rid of avalanche workers. It will all be done by computers.
When I did my Level 1 course a few years ago, they said you’ll show up to a site, you’ll probably already know what the snowpack is like. Your job will be to stick a probe into the snow and it’s going to tell you exactly what the snowpack is. You’re just out there confirming what the models have told you. Then you’ll go back down and press a button and do avalanche control.
The people that go out there in the backcountry. Backcountry skiers might have all the information they could possibly want. I did less than 10, but I did quite a few coroner’s reports, and that was very interesting work because you have to do all the technical aspects of why the avalanche happened, the snowpack and all that. But it was interesting to see the reasoning—why were people there? What were they doing? What were their biases? You could have all the information you want, you could ever need, and if you can’t put that together, If you can’t assimilate that information into your brain, you might as well not have the information.
I did an investigation in Rogers Pass. They went in, read the forecast, read the stability reports, read everything, and knew there was a deep slab instability, and knew there was a new snow instability on top, and they decided to go skiing anyways. So, they wandered up NRC Gully by Macdonald 4, or whatever it was. They did an excellent job of route-finding to deal with the new snow instability, but the deep slab instability failed above them. They were at this one point where they triggered the avalanche. I think it was a shallow area that had been scoured so it was susceptible to their weight.
There was three guys and a girl. The girl was a professional patroller and she was holding back. She didn’t want to go, she didn’t like what was going, she was quite nervous, but she went anyway. And she said that she looked up and saw this white wall coming over the ridge. That was a class 3.5. It was interesting, because they were on this ridge and one guy was staying on the ridge and another was just off the ridge and into a gully. He was close enough that when the avalanche started failing around him, the guy on the ridge reached out with his ski pole and said, “Grab my pole.” That guy didn’t grab the pole, went 1,500 ft down the mountain, and sieved through the hockey stick little trees. He went through there and it killed him. The guy on the ridge went 50 m and he wasn’t hurt at all.
They knew that instabilty was there, they read it. It was right there in bold writing and they went ski touring, because they couldn’t put it together that 30 cm of snow or 40 cm of snow, whatever it was, over acres is a huge amount of weight, and your little 600 pounds—those three people together—that was enough to overcome that because they didn’t think in terms of the weight that was on that snowpack over this huge area. And it smoked them.
They should have known. One of them said, “There was no indication. There was nothing to do indicate there was a problem.” Well, **** man.
Well, that’s the problem with deep slab instabilities is there is no indication until it’s too late.
Well, the indication is it’s a deep slab instability. You know it, that’s the information. And you’ve got that much weight in one storm. At least wait two days before you go skiing. At least let it settle out.
So, I think that problem is, how do we educate people about their biases?
Anything else you’d like to add? Is there anything we’d miss?
Nope. I think the CAA is a great association. They’ve done wonderful work. If you look over the years, and I’m totally behind them.
Well, thank you so much Bruce. I really appreciate the time.