Hello, my name is Alex Cooper and I’m here on behalf of the Canadian Avalanche Association’s 40th Anniversary History Project. As part of this work, we are interviewing key figures from the Canadian avalanche industry’s past in order to capture our association’s and our industry’s history. Today I’m joined by Geoff Freer.
Geoff started his career in the Canadian avalanche industry in the early 70s following snow and avalanche work in the U.S. and studies with John Montagne at Montana State University. He worked for the National Research Council for two winters under Peter Schaerer doing snow and avalanche research and developing early training courses.
Following the North Route Café Avalanche near Terrace In 1974, he was part of the Avalanche Task Force that was assembled to make recommendations to the province about avalanche hazard along B.C. highways. He then went on to manage the provincial avalanche program from 1974 to 1988. During this time, he helped found the Canadian Avalanche Association and was the organization’s initial Secretary-Treasurer.
Since leaving the snow avalanche program in the late-80s, he has gone on to manage numerous major infrastructure projects across B.C., including construction of the venues for the 2010 Olympics. But, as he put it to me in an e-mail just recently, his heart is still with the snow and avalanche phenomena and people in the business.
Thanks so much for joining me, Geoff.
I’m really interested to talk to you and learn more about the early years of the CAA and the highway, the provincial avalanche programs.
Geoff Freer: Hi Alex. I’m glad to be part of the project.
We’ll start with a question I ask everyone, which is, what was your first experience with avalanches, whether it was in person or seeing it on TV, or anything like that?
Probably two or three things come to mind.
One, when I was in school in Vancouver, Peter Schaerer came to give a talk about avalanches in the context of ski area management and helicopter skiing. That was my first glimpse into “this is what I want to do with my life,” thinking, of course, that I could ski my whole life away.
The other two things that come to mind when you ask that question is working at a ski area in the U.S., just the day-to-day avalanche control and the normal little slipping and sliding to do with small slides.
And then, when I went to work at Rogers Pass. In my first couple of weeks, we were measuring impact pressures of avalanches on top of snow sheds. We had some equipment on top of the snow sheds. Being the new kid, the last thing you did before you set the equipment up, somebody had to be on top of the snow shed pressing the transducers that measured the pressures of the impact.
The senior guy, Paul Anhorn, another great guy from the past, he went down below to make sure the recording equipment was recording the avalanche pressures when the avalanches came. I was sitting up there in this blinding snowstorm waiting for this to happen. I looked up and of course here was an avalanche coming down off Rogers, off the slope there. The transducers were on these big steel posts and there was nothing I could do except grab onto the steel post.
I was kneeling already, so I grabbed onto the steel post. I had no idea how big the avalanche was because it was a big powder cloud. Basically, it stretched me out flat on the snow just from the force of it. Of course, I was low profile because I was lying on top of the snow, and there was lots of pressure, but I kept hanging on. When the snow built up over my body, everything was good, it was over, and I wasn’t that deep. I managed to kick myself up by holding on to this steel post. I managed to stand up out of the avalanche. It was a dry powder, late-November, early-December avalanche.
All my gear was gone down into the creek, probably below the snow shed. I walked down below and Paul Anhorn said, “Gee, I didn’t measure anything. I didn’t feel you pressing the transducer.”
I was, of course, covered in snow. He’s going, “What happened to you?” in his Swiss accent. I told him what happened and of course he had to go out and look for himself.
We got my pack and all my gear out the next summer in the bottom of the creek down below.
Anyways, that was a long-winded answer to your question.
That’s quite the story. I’m glad you came out unscathed. Did that make you go, “What am I getting into? Maybe I should run away.” Or…
No. You know, when you’re young and stupid and don’t know any better. I mean, we were doing all the wrong things even though we were in the business. It had been blowing and snowing and avalanches had started to run, and this was the last thing to do. It was just, we were late and… I can still see that whole sequence in my mind’s eye.
But yeah, dumb thing to do, came out OK, but just reinforced the need for education and all that good stuff that we do today.
Yeah.
So, where did you grow up?
I grew up in the Okanagan. Born in a place called Ocean Falls, on the west coast of B.C., but grew up in the Okanagan. My original home ski areas were Apex and Big White. My Grade 6 teacher gave me a set of old wooden skis and took me up to the ski hill and that was my introduction.
OK. And then you mentioned being in school in in Vancouver where you heard Peter Schaerer talk. Was that university or was that…?
Yeah. I was at BCIT and taking fish, wildlife, and recreation, a two-year course, and Peter came there. Our recreation part of the course was ski area management and he came for that. Our instructor was a big fan of Peter. Up to that point, I had no idea what the hell I wanted to do. I mostly worked in forestry before that.
So, you did a two-year program and then you ended up in the States. What ski area did you work at?
I worked at Bridger Bowl in Bozeman, Montana. A great, great ski area. I worked there as a professional ski patrolman and took, at that time I think the only snow and avalanche course at a university in North America, with John Montagne at Montana State University.
I had found out about the course. I had talked to John Montagne and he actually helped me line up the job with the pro patrol so I could work at this pro patrol, take his course, do a bunch of research, work with him, and do the avalanche control, and all of that. I was working under the table, so at night my wife and I had a job cleaning all the washrooms at the Bridger Bowl ski resort for a ski race that was never there. That was our night job. I was working on ski patrol during the day. That was my introduction to hands-on avalanche control and all the stuff that goes with it.
So, you went down there specifically to take that course and do that work?
Yeah.
That was your first job in the industry, in the field?
Yeah.
OK. Did you take the course in Canada as well, one of the early avalanche courses with Peter Schaerer?
In the early days, right after Peter Schaerer came along, Parks Canada had one-week avalanche courses in Jasper and Banff. I managed to sneak into one of those courses in Jasper. That was actually my first training course, and so I went there. Willi Pfisterer was an instructor, Peter Fuhrman, Peter Schaerer. There was lot of cork boards on the course. My professor from BCIT helped me attend that course, and then I took the National Avalanche School in Reno, Nevada, in the U.S. I ended up going to Bridger Bowl afterward.
Do you remember the difference between the course you took in Canada, and then going down to the US. Were they different?
Yeah. The Canadian one, the Parks Canada one, was really much more hands-on, out in the field, ski touring, hands-on. The National Avalanche School in the U.S. at that time was really what you and I would probably call an ISSW today. It was a school, but it was all inside. I think they had it in Reno so that we could gamble at night and get cheap food. And all of us ski bums needed cheap accommodation too, so that was another reason to be in Reno.
But yeah, quite a bit different. Of course, the U.S. since that time, there’s been lots of hands-on courses very similar to the ones we had in Canada.
Yeah. I should have asked this earlier, but what, what drew you into the avalanche world? You mentioned hearing Peter talk, but what was it about his talk that made you say, “This is what I want to do?”
I don’t know. I’d always been in the bush and I loved skiing. I really was probably thinking, “Hmm, if I can get a job in the avalanche business, then I can ski tour and ski my whole life and get paid for it.” That was probably really it in a nutshell. And my wife was a skier from Kimberley, so she was all in.
That was probably the initial piece. And just avalanches. Snow and avalanches, as you know, are pretty darn interesting. There’s a lot of grey area. We don’t know everything. All of that is from my perspective pretty fascinating, even today. Lots of stuff we still don’t know, and lots of challenges. It was the same back then.
How did you get hired to work with Peter and Paul—Peter Schaerer and Paul Anhorn—at the National Research Council? And maybe talk a bit about what you did? You talked about the doing the pressure measurements, but what else did you do up there?
How I got there was I was offered a job on the Whistler ski patrol. Then Peter Schaerer offered me a job—I had kept in touch with him even when I went to the U.S. The reality was at Whistler it was hard to find a place to stay and I really wanted to work with Peter—just a very knowledgeable guy, as you know. He offered me a job and I decided to go there. We lived in Rogers Pass. Paul Anhorn, who worked with Peter, also was a great attraction in terms of working with somebody that was from Europe that just had a lot of knowledge and experience.
They were doing interesting stuff about impact pressures and snow loads around the Kootenays. We would travel around the Kootenays and take snow profiles and take snow loads. That was all for the building code actually, but that was also very good. At that time, Peter and Paul were doing courses for heli-ski guides, ski areas, highways guys, hydro guys. That was attractive. I was part of that.
At that time, we were also really developing all the snow obs—snow and weather observations—that that are pretty standard today. That was all part of our process there. We had to develop some of that in writing so that we could teach these courses.
What were the courses like that you were teaching?
Very similar to Level 1 courses today. For the highways guys, you focused on the highway aspects of snow and avalanches and safety. Ski areas, obviously we were out on skis. BC Hydro was more about avalanche terrain, as well as worker safety. With the heli-ski companies and the heli-ski guides, that was basically out in the field. You would do it in their workplace, so very much directed at whoever most of the students were.
Quite a few of the courses we did the field work on Fidelity Mountain. We went up with snow cats and had great cooperation from and Fred and Walter Schleiss, who were part of these (courses) when we had them at Fidelity. It was a great place. The Northlander Hotel was at Rogers Pass then, so classes were in the Northlander and then we went up to Fidelity.
Courses actually started to move around a bit too. We would do some at Rogers Pass, do some at Whistler, over at Banff, Jasper, or dependent on what the client wanted. The highway department, if they wanted something somewhere special, we’d go there and teach people how to recognize terrain, do snow profiles, stuff like that.
Was that all part of the curriculum?
Yeah. It’s all kind of the basics. Introduction to avalanches and snow. We would go out, do basic snow profiles, and then the avalanche safety side of things—beacons, probing, rescue. All the very basic stuff. You couldn’t make a snow forecaster in five days, but you can certainly give them the introduction and they would go away knowing what they should be thinking about and looking for.
And then of course the safety stuff that you always have to do—beacons, probing, all the equipment, and then the rescue.
Interesting.
I want to get into the North Route Café avalanche. It’s a huge, important event in our industry’s history, when on January 22, 1974, people waiting out a storm in this café along the highway were struck by an avalanche. Can you just tell me like what you remember about that avalanche? Where were you?
We were at Roger’s Pass working. It was, of course, big in the media. Being in the business, anytime you have any big avalanches or incidents, everybody’s interested in trying to find out right away what happened. So, lots of media at the time.
The North Route Café was right beside the highway, and behind it was a bunch of pretty mature trees. But a very dry avalanche came and took out the café. One of the people that was killed was a Ministry of Highways snow plow operator that had stopped there for coffee. If you’ve been between Terrace and Prince Rupert, there’s not too many places to have coffee. That was the place where people would stop on their way.
The MLA for the area, Graham Lea, happened to also be the Minister of Transportation. With the fatalities and being in his area—big concern, big media—the government of the day decided they would form a task force and have a look at avalanches affecting highways across the province. An additional thing was also thinking about hydro lines, ski areas, and some thinking about other stuff as well. But the focus was definitely highways.
The minister formed the task force in the Ministry of Transportation. There was a regional director out of Burnaby named Dudley Godfrey. He was an engineer, but he was also a ski touring fanatic and he had actually come and had taken some of our NRC courses. He was chosen as the chairman of the task force. They hired Peter Schaerer, myself, a guy working at Granduc Mine at the time, Roger Tremblay, up by Stewart. That was also in the minister’s riding. Roger was a specialist for Granduc Mine. I’m not sure if the minister knew him or not, but he became aware of Roger, so Roger was on the task force as well.
So that was the task force. The assignment was to look at avalanches across the province and come up with recommendations for the minister in about six months. I think we started around May of ’74, and we had to have a report in by October 1 of ’74.
The process? We went around the province, looked at pretty much every avalanche area that was known at the time by ministry people, and then talked to a lot of people as well. Dudley Godfrey, being in the ministry, was pretty familiar with everybody and also familiar with avalanches and incidents that had happened in the past that never got any media. Of course, all the local people in all of these places knew about the avalanches, although they generally called them snow slides. Basically, everybody was very forthcoming.
We did a report, presented it to the minister, and the government of the day said we’re going to go with these recommendations. One of the recommendations was to hire a person to come into the ministry and set up a snow-avalanche program for the ministry. In some ways, we were like any good consultant—we recommended further work.
As it turned out, the government didn’t have time to put a hiring process in place, so they asked me if I would take on the job, with Peter Schaerer’s agreement, because I was working for the National Resource Council. I ended up working for the Ministry of Transportation and the job was to implement the recommendations of the task force. I actually got a formal job two or three years after they actually hired me.
Being part of this task force, you had six months to get this report done. It sounds like it was pretty broad—it’s focused on highway avalanche problems, but you mentioned ski areas, and there was building codes and zoning as well mentioned as part of your mandate.
There’s a lot to go into here, but I guess: what did you? What did you learn about how avalanche hazard was managed in the province while undertaking that work? What existed and how was it handled to that point?
How it was handled at the time was avalanches would come down and people would go with equipment and clean it up. In some places where people have been around a while, you would have a road foreman that was aware that if one avalanche came down, there might be more coming, so he or she would just hold the crews back for a while. But that wasn’t the practice generally. The practice generally was avalanches are down, just get the cats and loaders and go in and get the road open. The focus was getting the road open and so that was very much it.
I think in terms of other things, zoning really wasn’t much of a consideration, even though there were already some subdivisions that were located in avalanche areas. A lot of them, you wouldn’t notice that unless you were in the business. The same with ski areas and snowmobiling and recreation side of things. Avalanches really weren’t part of the formula generally from a government perspective.
Certainly, places like Whistler had ski patrol and did avalanche control work, but the government really hadn’t taken a look at that. At the time there was a B.C. ski coordinator and their job was to look at developing ski areas and working with ski areas that wanted to expand their boundaries.
That ski coordinator, when they started—I can’t remember what year it was—but they got us more involved in helping them decide when ski areas wanted to expand, that there was some thought put into what are the snow avalanche issues and what is the ski area going to do about it. It became more government oversight on those kinds of things, which hadn’t happened before the task force.
OK.
And I’m curious, what was your role specifically with the task force?
I was the junior kid on the block, so I was the guy that did whatever, and soaking up everything I could from people like Peter Schaerer, Dudley Godfrey from a transportation perspective, and Roger Tremblay.
We did a whole lot of mapping, air photo work, mapping out the avalanches as best we could in the time frame we had. Just doing all the nitty gritty work, looking up historical information, interviewing people about historical things, trying to get a sense for each kind of avalanche area in the province. Of course, there were basically no records, so it was taking a 1:50,000 map and going out there again to find all the avalanche paths.
Best you could talk to the local road foreman about what had happened in the past. How frequently do these come down here, here, and here? They would really try and give us some data to then decide what should the ministry do about this in various locations.
We divided into three areas—high avalanche hazard areas, lots of avalanches frequently, etcetera. Then ones that are more moderate. And then there’s your low-hazard areas where things don’t happen very often, but they need to be paid attention to.
My work was a lot of that grunt work in the background. We travelled a lot, everybody. Those were the days when the government actually had a government jet fleet. We actually were able to fly in these Citation jets to various locations to speed up the process. That was great. All those things have gone by the wayside these days.
Getting out there, for me, and for Peter for that matter at the time, we went to lots of places that neither of us had been to before. You go to a place like Stewart and Bear Pass, and at that time the Bear Glacier came right down to the highway. There’s just some beautiful places in this province as you know. It was good.
You mentioned low-frequency paths. I guess the one that hit the North Route must have been low-frequency, with mature timber right above the café. So, understanding all those hazards or where they might exist…
I mean as much as possible we were trying to put some science to terrain evaluation and some science to the whole thing in a space of six months. A big part of our recommendations was to continue doing that and actually create some accurate snow avalanche atlases. One of the early-day projects was creating snow avalanche atlases for each site.
Then we got down into the nitty gritty. We started a recording system to record avalanche occurrences. We set up weather stations and weather training for all the crews in some places. We hired some avalanche technicians for the high-hazard areas.
But during the task force, it was do the best you can and give the ministry a sense for what’s their problem and what are we recommending to mitigate it, and that’s what that’s what we did.
OK. And then you’re brought on to implement these recommendations. How did you prioritize what to do when you were first starting the program?
Well, the report laid out things pretty well from that perspective. But really, the main focus right off the bat was the safety side of things. So, worker safety, making sure workers are trained, making sure all the workers have got the proper equipment, weather stations for forecasting, making sure that worker safety got taken care of right away.
That was developing one-day training courses, two-day training courses. Every road foreman in the province and shift foreman went for a five-day course that we were putting on at the National Resource Council.
Worker safety was a first priority, and safety measures, rescue beacons, rescue equipment, etcetera. Signage was another one, and that was the public safety side of things. You can’t train all the public, but at a minimum we’ve identified the avalanche paths, now let’s get some signs up to say, “Avalanche area, do not stop.”
Those very basic things were the priorities. It just made sense to do that. Let’s make sure workers are safe, and let’s get public safety going as much as we can right away, and we’ll figure out a lot of the more in-depth things going forward.
For example, we made some recommendations about looking at areas for structural control, diversion dams, things like that. We left that as a lower priority and worked on that as we had time.
OK. So, how did it shift from this into becoming a more active avalanche control program with active forecasters in place? I imagine that was a process over a number of years, but how did that develop?
The one thing we recommended in the task was in the high avalanche areas, we identified some areas that we thought should have avalanche technicians, avalanche forecasters and controllers, so that was something else that we did right away. It took some time, but there really weren’t any avalanche people in the ministry. And there were some people in the ministry interested, but they were for the most-part starting from Square 1.
Some people from the ministry volunteered to fill those roles. And then we hired some people to fill those roles, basically talking Hope, Kootenay Pass over in the Kootenay’s, and Stewart, Terrace, and Revelstoke areas. And so we hired people to do that and basically, yeah, that was the start. Those were the high-frequency areas and the areas that we thought deserved a more active program.
And the focus there was the same thing: weather stations, mapping, signing, training crews, and then also getting started on helicopter bombing. Early days we did helicopter bombing because we didn’t have rifles or anything like that. We did a lot of helicopter bombing, some case charging, which was something that was pretty much developed up at Granduc Mine. They did a lot of that at Granduc Mine, but we ended up doing quite a bit of that in some places. And as we had more time, and as things developed, the Coquihalla, once it was in place, we had recoilless rifles there. Also in the Coquihalla, we tried out an aerial tramway bomb system there, which was kind of unique for North America. So yeah, as we had more time and got more expertise and got people…
At the time it was kind of interesting because in the avalanche industry, there was quite a bit of skepticism that the Ministry of Transportation would actually make this happen. Was this going to be just a one-time wonder? Was it going to be a task force report that ended up on a shelf and government never would never do anything about it? But as it turned out, they were committed. And I think as people in the industry saw that they were committed, there were more people from ski areas, industry, or ski touring types, more people in the ski side of the business were willing to come in and work for the Ministry of Transportation because they knew something was sticking around.
Yeah. And now it’s quite the robust big program. I think it’s the biggest overall avalanche program in in Canada when you combine all the areas, I think eight areas now. So that’s quite the thing to be at the start of.
For you personally, how did you feel or what was it like for you to be involved in getting this off the ground? Especially—how old were you at the time?
I was 24 years old.
Really, they needed somebody with a lot more experience than I had, but, I don’t know, it just kind of happened. There weren’t a lot of people in the business in Canada at that time. Park service, heli-ski guides, which was a much smaller industry then. National parks, like Fred and Walter Schleiss’ team at Rogers Pass, and then some ski areas—Whistler in particular had a program. So, it wasn’t a lot of people in the industry then.
That was an opportunity for me, but it was pretty scary at the time. Twenty-four, you’re also trying to learn about everything else, and leading people, and trying to understand government and how government works, which was all new to me. But I had lots of help. The people that that we did hire were very helpful. We’ve had great teams all the way through and it was very interesting.
I would come home at night and then I would phone Paul Anhorn and say, “Well, I’ve got this issue and this is what I’m thinking about doing. What do you think?” And same thing with Peter (Schaerer).
With mentors like that—Fred and Walter Schleiss—I could call those people up and we had all worked together, so it was all great from that perspective. And so that part was actually the easier part, because they were all there to help me in the background, and we were still doing courses together and all that good stuff. So that was great.
Probably the bigger scary thing was just developing a whole team of people across the province, and introducing the avalanche business into the Ministry of Transportation. There were certainly a number of folks in the ministry that just thought this was way over the top and we shouldn’t be doing any of this. It was big organization and I’m a 24-year-old new kid coming into the organization. I have to say, I had great support from the executive of the day, but that also tended to irritate some of the rest of the folks in the organization. We had assistant deputy ministers, deputy ministers that were all very supportive. The chief engineer of the day also became a big supporter and mentor. They helped me in the organization.
I can definitely see that being a 24-year-old and telling government senior bureaucrats that, “Hey, we need to start dropping bombs out of helicopters,” would be raise some eyebrows.
Yeah (chuckle).
You know, there’s never enough money in government, so we were spending quite a bit of money on the program and getting it up and running. Even the designers—probably some of my biggest debates and arguments were with designers in designing the Coquihalla Highway. Most of the things that I was suggesting were totally what the designers did not want to do in terms of keeping the road grade exactly right, no curves. But again, government was very supportive.
Peter Schaerer helped me a lot with that and worked on the design of the snow shed there. And so I think Coquihalla is a good example of good design, avoiding most of the avalanche problems through a mountain pass. That’s what we should have been doing 150 years ago, but of course we weren’t thinking about it that time. It was a horse trail, and then it was a wagon trail, and then it was a road.
Yeah. You mentioned the Coquihalla, and that’s one of the things I was going to ask you about, because it was the probably the first highway in B.C. that was designed with avalanche avalanches in mind right from the start. How heavily involved were you in that process, and all the design you mentioned?
I think the other one was Rogers Pass. Peter Schaerer came over to basically work on the Rogers Pass location. That was a federal highway of course, but that’s a pretty good example as well. But you’re right, provincial highway, Coquihalla. It really was a good experience going in and setting up weather stations and doing snow profiles eight or 10 years ahead of time, so by the time we got to design, we had a fair bit of data. We had it all mapped, had avalanche frequencies, we had weather information, and that all fed into the design when we got to the working with the designers.
And then we did a bunch of avalanche control measures as well at the same time that we did construction. But most importantly, we put curvature into the highway to avoid avalanches wherever we could, and we worked from there. So, yeah, good experience. It was the way. I mean, when we taught avalanche terrain courses, that’s why we told everybody what to do. So, we actually did it on this one, so it was good.
With the recent final phase of the Kicking Horse project, they’ve now moved the highway away from the cliffs to keep it out of the out of the avalanche paths.
There’s now some very good people in the business, in the industry, that they do that matter of fact. Consultants, they just do some great work now, and I’ve been working with some of them on my highway projects. It’s just a pleasure to see all the all the new folks, well, relatively new folks in the industry basically out there doing great things. And avalanches are just standard practice now in terms of looking at highways and highway relocations and highway projects. That’s just standard, so it’s great.
Yeah.
Who are some of the key people you hired early on when you’re with for the avalanche program?
Oh, now you’re going to test my memory, but Mike Zillich was the technician in Terrace. Unfortunately, Mike’s no longer with us, he had a health issue. But yeah, Mike was in Terrace.
Hope was a guy named John Balaman, who was a highway technician, and he was followed by a guy named Ed Campbell, who was in the snow business, actually worked in Rogers Pass with Peter after I was there. And at that time the Fraser Canyon and Allison Pass, Highway 3, were very busy compared to today, and it was a it was a big deal at that time. Kootenay Pass—Dale Holmes was the original guy there. He came out of the ministry but—and there’s been quite a few people there—John Tweedy was probably the name to remember. He had worked at Red Mountain ski area. He came over, and his team were great folks. John’s still in the business, that you probably know.
I heard he just officially retired this year.
So oh, did he?
Yeah.
And then in Stewart, Frank Rizzardo was a district technician up there and he started out at Stewart. I spent time up there the first couple of years myself, and then eventually Frank Rizzardo came on there and did the avalanche technician work there for a while. Eventually we got someone from the ski industry there. It was good.
I know Revelstoke, I talked to Bruce Allen. Was he the first guy there?
Yeah. I think Bruce was the first guy in Revelstoke. Now, somebody’s going to probably say no, Geoff, but yeah, I think Bruce was the first guy there and he was, great.
We’ve talked a lot about the highway program. I want to get into the Canadian Avalanche Association, which is what this is supposed to be all about. I’m really interested in the other stuff, so that’s why I get into it.
With the Canadian Avalanche Association, I guess we could start with the Canadian Avalanche Committee, which was formed out of the Avalanche Task Force. How did that come together?
I mean we did identify the need for more coordination, but I think that really started as Peter (Schaerer), Paul (Anhorn), Willie (Pfisterer), Fred and Walter Schleiss, Chris Stethem. I mean, at all these avalanche courses and training courses, and we had instructor training courses. But, I mean as it went along, right from 1970, 71, 72, 73, when we got together at these courses, we would end up of course having a beer after work and that’s where a lot of the discussion started about how do we bring everybody together. Eventually there was a committee and we ended up forming the Association as an actual formal society and body.
But it really happened over time. Lots of discussions over beers and dinners, and then we had lots of informal meetings with that same group. Eventually, as the courses became more and more extensive and more demand for them, and we were doing more courses and people were starting to think about liabilities—Peter was always saying he wanted to get out of the business but he never did— he wanted to pass the business on to others, but he still loved it… But anyways, it wasn’t just like that. It was all of those different informal meetings ended up with a committee to talk about the Association. That led to the Association, and it was pretty much all the same players—Peter, Willi, Fred Schleiss, Walter Schleiss, Peter Fuhrman, Claire (Israelson), Rich Wilson, Chris Stethem, myself, Paul Anhorn. I don’t know, I’m probably missing somebody. It was still a pretty small crowd in the business.
Heli-ski industry as well, Hans Gmoser was involved in some of the discussions. And Geoff, a doctor that was a heli-ski guide at the time. I’m forgetting Geoff’s last name. Rudi Gertsch was in on some of the conversations.
Peter was very good at kind of bringing everybody together and because it was so small, that was possible.
Yeah.
To your question, it wasn’t that definitive day or that definitive meeting. I think it was done the right way, over beers and dinners, and the people that had been there, done that.
I think it was it was good, but then as new people got into the industry, they brought some of the discipline and the detail that needed to be dealt with. Part of that was Gary Walton from BCIT on the courses. He also helped us in the formation of the committee and the Association. He helped bring some kind of discipline to. “OK, boys, you need to have some paperwork to go with this.” You need to form a non-profit society, and all those kinds of things. We were just interested in snow and avalanches and skiing.
Yeah. So, the committee, which would have been met in the mid-to-late-70s until it became an association, how formal were your activities? It sounds like it was pretty informal, but, what was some of the more formal work you engaged in?
I guess it was pretty informal. Quite often we would have those meetings in the fall just before the avalanche courses were going to start. We’d usually get together as instructors and then we would have some meetings around the committee. Eventually the Association meetings would be in the fall as well because we were all getting together then anyways.
I think the formal Association and the courses before that, after I moved to the Ministry of Transportation—the Ministry of Transportation was very helpful in allowing us to continue working not just on transportation stuff. The ministry provided resources for instructors, for producing materials, avalanche course materials, etcetera.
That’s how I ended up being the Secretary-Treasurer, director, of the Association, because the ministry was willing to let us contribute and be part of that whole picture.
Before we get too far into the CAA and those early years, I just want to talk a bit more about what was happening before then. A few things I dug up by looking through the initial issues of the Avalanche news, which started in 1979, but I know there was a snow avalanche workshop in Banff in 1976, which was a precursor to ISSW. Were you involved with organizing that? And I guess the one in Whistler in 1980 as well?
Yeah. ‘76 was almost mostly organized by Parks Canada, but, yes, lots of discussions there. And the avalanche group, we organized ISSW 1980 in Vancouver. Peter was the chairman of the meeting, but the Ministry of Transportation organized that one. We also supported the ones at Whistler.
The Whistler one, gow many people came out to that? Was that a big deal?
I guess. I don’t remember the numbers, but definitely lots of people, in the hundreds. I’m just not sure how many. I can’t remember how many came in 1980, but there was probably a couple hundred people.
There’s a lot of talk about collecting incident reports from operators. There’s creating guidelines, standards, and then also establishing courses and setting up curriculums. How involved were you with all that work in the late-70s?
Well, I wrote a paper on the guidelines. I can’t remember if that was for 1980 ISSW or not, but I did. I did do a paper, which was really a summary of what we had been teaching at NRC courses and at BCIT courses. It was really taking that material and trying to put it together in one place so that we can share it with our American and European counterparts. The U.S. didn’t really have that. I think B.C., Canada was the first place certainly in North America to have that formal. So, I did a paper on that, I think it was 1980, all those courses.
There was a pretty good course in Bozeman too. I just can’t remember what paper went where.
OK. And then in 1980, I read May 1980, I guess you guys were having annual avalanche operator meetings when somebody suggested that maybe you need to form an association. Do you know who suggested that? Was there a specific person or did it just emerge out of out of the talks?
No, that was, the organic process I was talking about. It was basically Peter, Willie, Fred, myself, Chris Stethem, and I’m sure I’m missing somebody, but it was the same group. Gary Walton would have been there. And so that was that same group we had. We got lawyers involved, but I can’t remember who did the legal work in the beginning.
I think Chris (Stethem) said it was his lawyer that did the paperwork. I forgot the name. Chris mentioned the name. That it was his lawyer who did the paperwork, did the draft bylaws and constitution and whatnot, and got it filed.
There was a guy from Ferris and Company in Vancouver that was also involved in the ski patrol with Whistler, Rob. Anyways, he’s still around. He’s a good guy.
What was the process like to go from saying, “Hey, we need an association!” Then a year later, it was decided that we’re going to do it. And then my understanding is in 1981, is you put together a task force or a committee, some sort of working group to actually establish what are going to be the goals and objectives of the CAA.
Well, I think because of the organic process, the formation was, from my perspective, a bit anticlimactic. It was really a process of lawyers doing their work, and getting together and people just making sure whatever needed to be decided got decided.
I think if Peter was here, he’d probably say, well, a bit of a relief that he thought he might get out of the business, but he never did. I’m convinced he never really wanted to.
Even after he retired (from the National Research Council, in 1991), he stayed as a consultant for well over a decade.
I think also by that time there were more players in the business. That was probably something else. At the time, more and more people were being able to instruct an avalanche course. It was bringing a wider group into the whole thing. I think everybody was happy about that. Everybody else is getting older, and one of our limitations in the early days was lack of people in the business.
I don’t know how many people are in the business today in Canada, but I’m guessing it’s got to be 500 maybe. I don’t know.
I read that when the CAA was formed there was 50—sorry, I may get the terms wrong—but 50 Professional Members, and then nine Associate Members. And now I think it’s closer to 1,200 total. It’s grown a lot since then.
That’s great.
What do you remember being the main hurdles and work you had to do to get the association off the ground in those early years?
Well, I think everybody in the business at the time was pretty strong-willed, lots of strong opinions around the table. And, of course, everybody was in their own business. But lots of strong opinions and lots of interesting debate. I think that also contributed to the success, and that probably in some ways contributed to the organic formation.
I think if you would have tried to say, “We’re going to do an avalanche association tomorrow,” in the beginning, it probably would have failed.
Yeah.
I think Peter’s leadership and others, I think everybody bought into it. In the early days there were so few people that it was easy to bring everybody in. Everybody got to know each other, and everybody got to know what was important to the other industries.
And because we were mostly all teaching same courses, the same thing, we all eventually got to a bit of a consensus, even though you had lots of strong opinions. I think that’s probably the biggest—not issue—but it wasn’t going to happen overnight with all the strong opinions in the room.
Yeah.
What do you remember being some of the bigger debates or discussions you guys had?
I mean early days, those were the days when some people thought that you had to be in the business for 30 years before you were really an avalanche person. And so you had that kind of chat around. The early days, a lot of the guides were from Europe, and so lots of discussion in those days about training up Canadians to be guides. So, there was that discussion in the background, more related to ACMG, but same in the avalanche business.
You know, a lot of the Europeans that came over were the ones that helped everybody in Canada get to where we needed to be from an avalanche perspective. That was a different perspective back then, and I think everybody got over that eventually. Everybody learned that everybody can get together and education is the key.
And some of the folks with perhaps pretty firm opinions on some individual things eventually came around, just either gave up or through a consensus they could see, well, yeah, maybe there is a little bit of merit to that idea. You know, maybe some of these young Canadian guys can be avalanche specialists. But again, we were all in the same business, a small group. So, it was all really good.
And no big issues?
If anything, it was, can we get these meetings over with and let’s get outside. None of us wanted to be in meetings.
Yeah, for sure.
One thing that’s come up in quite a few other interviews—and I don’t think I mentioned this before—but convincing other professions about what you guys do seems to come up a lot. Especially, in some big debates or dealings with say the engineers. Like, “Hey! What or who are these avalanche professionals and how capable are they?”
How much were you involved? Was it hard to convince or let people know about what you guys do and what you’re good at?
No, I wasn’t involved too much. I think that was starting up basically about when I was leaving the industry, and we were more formal. Like the CAA was there. Probably the engineering association was a little bit sensitive about that and there started to be more concern about that from the other professional associations.
I think in the early days, when I was more involved, you ran into a little bit of that. But quite often I’d be working with a professional engineer and he or she knew that they knew nothing about snow avalanches. When it came down to the individual engineers, they recognized where their speciality was and where it’s not. Same with forestry. I did quite a bit of work with some forestry folks in the day and the same kind of thing.
I mean, professional foresters, we were encouraging not logging on some steep slopes, but trying to allow as much logging as possible at the same time. And because I had been a logger, I knew what they wanted. But again, professional foresters, generally, they could see the damage from avalanches out there and they knew that they knew nothing about it. So, it was an individual to an individual talking.
I think when the professional association got involved, it probably got more formal and they’re thinking quite rightly about liabilities and all that good stuff, you know. But that got more formal after I was wrapped up with the industry in in ‘88.
OK. I looked through the early issues of Avalanche News, which give a rough overview of what was being talked about in the avalanche world at the time. I really like that InfoEx, which wasn’t really started until 1991, but even in the early-80s, you guys were talking about an information exchange and trying to see how you could make that work.
I was wondering what you remember about that and if you could talk about how you were involved, either from the CAA or from the Ministry of Highways.
It was always a discussion and we always wanted to share. Basically, it started out really local—ski area folks, heli-ski folks, snowcat-skiing folks, Ministry of Transportation folks. I mean everybody, if nothing else, picked up the phone and talked to each other or had a beer at the end of the day and talked about it. That was also part of ministry and ski area safety plans. Rescue plans had all the key people listed and they were all listed with phone numbers, so they were your fellow avalanche people in other industries who were called if you had issues.
I think it was the same with sharing information if there was big avalanches or avalanche cycles, or snow issues, snow layers, weather. I think everybody shared on an informal basis in the very early days. Some concern from some industries about saying too much just from a liability perspective, not wanting to advertise that they had problems or had big avalanches. Everybody got over that pretty quickly from my perspective, and I think a majority of people in the industry were very discreet. I mean everybody shared but nobody was going out there. I don’t know what’s going on today with the social media, but then there was no social media it was pick up the phone.
I work for the CAA and they don’t they don’t let me on InfoEx or tell me what’s going on behind the scenes. I think it’s very important to respect the needs, the interests of industry and make sure the exchange remains a private discussion amongst operators that’s not out there for everybody to read.
I think that happened informally and that was one thing. You know that Peter Schaerer was probably the glue in a lot of ways that kept all of us together back then and sticking to the science. NRC (National Research Council) were involved in every industry. The avalanche courses were every industry, and so that was the glue that kept everything everybody together in a lot of ways. So just big credit to Peter, Willie, Fred Schleiss.
I’m quite interested in how you handled explosive regulations and policies because you would have been involved with that in both of your roles.
Yeah, it was certainly difficult at the time. Worksafe BC—Workers Compensation Board at that time—they did not really understand our business, so we ended up with some committees. We had lots of meetings with WorkSafeBC at the time in terms of explosives—throwing hand charges at ski areas, Avalaunchers, helicopter bombing, 105 recoilless rifles outside of Rogers Pass, bringing recoilless rifles to other areas. Jack Bennetto was instrumental in in doing a bunch of that stuff. But certainly lots of issues around that.
Again, that was where the avalanche industry, and then the committee and then the association—once you have a group like the association… That was one of the impetuses for the association as well. It did give us a better voice with agencies. That was one place also where the Ministry of Transportation could help. Being a government agency, we were able to bring good communication, and if we had to, you can get folks like deputy ministers and assistant deputy ministers to talk to key individuals, WorkSafeBC, and stuff. A lot of that went on and I know a lot of that kept going on after I left with some of the new things that came along.
There’s lots of ongoing issues. Fuse News, is still a regular topic in The Avalanche Journal. I think it’ll always be a hot topic just because of how important it is, but also, you know, the safety implications.
You were on the board for three or four years. How come you stepped back from the board?
I don’t really remember why other than certainly for a lot of us, it got to the point where you wanted somebody else to take it on, bring new people into the industry. I mean, I’ve said a lot of times, we were small industry and we were and a few of us certainly had the concern that we really wanted to get new people into the business. Nobody in the avalanche business wants to spend time in meetings and on paperwork. It was getting others into the executive and into running things. Other than that, I don’t remember what year that was.
I have it as 1985.
No particular reason other than to get out of the administration that goes with that. In 1985 I was getting more into managing people than I was into managing avalanches. You have to get the other people into the business. You can’t depend on just a few people. We talked that quite a bit—to get other people into the business.
Did you stay involved with the CAA after you stepped off the board?
Yep. As a member, and after I left the business, I got more involved when the Canadian Avalanche Foundation came along and helping to raise the money. The Foundation was a great thing to do. I think education is the biggest thing we need to do—education and training.
You stepped away from the highway avalanche program in 1988. Why did you decided to move into a or choose to go into another role?
I was probably looking for a change and either get out of government or do something different. As I said, I was doing more people management. I wasn’t throwing bombs anymore and I wasn’t getting to go out skiing as much. And then the Ministry of Transportation came along one day and said, “How would you like to move into the operational side of the ministry and be a District Manager of Transportation?”
I did that for a few years and then I became a regional director for the north. Then I ended up working with Indigenous communities around a blockade of the Apex ski area. I ended up working in Indigenous relations for a while.
Then I started to work on big projects—the Lion’s Gate Bridge rehabilitation and other transportation projects like that. Really, a project management role, and I enjoyed it all. I enjoyed being in operational side of the ministry. Great people and lots of interesting things, and then getting into project management on big projects again. Lots of fun, exciting things, lots of challenges.
I ended up actually going and working with the Ministry of Energy and Mines as an Assistant Deputy Minister. Then I left government back in 2006 and I’ve been consulting since then, again on big projects, big transportation projects for the most part, and also doing some management reviews of organizations.
I got involved in the 2010 Olympics managing the construction of all the venues. That was fun, you have a schedule you have to meet, there’s no excuses. And it was Winter Olympics too, so I got to see some of my old avalanche colleagues as part of that.
More importantly, I’ve got seven grandkids. I’ve been doing quite a bit of whitewater rafting. We had our whitewater rafting company in Golden for a few years. There are no avalanches in the summer, so we had a whitewater rafting company for 13 years in Golden on the Kicking Horse River.
We sold that and now it’s rafting for fun, skiing for fun, and grandkids. And still doing consulting on projects.
You mentioned that you were pretty heavily involved with the whole Coquihalla reconstruction following the floods in 2021.
Thanks for the reminder. That was fun. I had a phone call one night: “Bridges have washed out in the Coquihalla.” I ended up going there and basically helping project manage to get the highway open.
But great to be back on the Coquihalla. We opened the highway in 1986, so coming back in 2021, November, was kind of fun. The weather was crappy and we’re flying around in helicopters, just bringing all kinds of memories back.
We got the highway open there, and then I ended up staying on to build six new bridges there, which we just wrapped up recently.
But big changes there, and I ran into some of the avalanche guys then.
I was going to say, with the Coquihalla, that happened in November. There must have been some avalanche work associated with that when you came back.
We worked with the local transportation avalanche guys. Some places we just couldn’t work. We were lucky with the weather, but we still had to have their expertise to make sure we were all safe there.
Did you ever miss doing the avalanche work, or being involved directly with it?
I miss the people. Just wonderful people in the industry. And all of the folks that I worked with over the years. You get into it—or at least I got into it for the skiing and the challenge and being out there. I was definitely missing the people and kind of missing the action. But we all we get older.
But it’s been great. The little glimpses I see into the industry at Foundation meetings, really, it just seems like it’s come so far. I’m just totally out of touch and it’s been great to see everything that everybody’s doing now. I went to the ISSW 2023 in Bend with Jack Bennetto to touch base with some old friends and listen to a few of the lectures. It’s just some great things happening. He and I are going to ISSW in Norway this fall, so we’re looking forward to that.
That sounds like a great trip. I wish I could wish the CAA could send me there, but it’s a little, it’s a little far, this one. I’ll probably watch it online.
It’s great to hear you still have the interest. You’ve said your heart is still with the avalanche community and the phenomena.
We had graupel falling the other day in our front yard and my wife said to my niece, Geoff will tell you all about graoupel and how it’s formed. My niece was very patient and listened for five minutes.
Very nice.
Before I get into the last two questions, which we bring up to everybody, I just want to make sure I didn’t miss anything.
I don’t think so. Thanks for helping me to spend some time remembering what I’ve actually done over the last 50 years.
No problem.
The penultimate question is, as you look back, what do you see as being the most significant accomplishment of the CAA in its 40-plus-year history?
I think ultimately just the education and training that’s happened from the beginning. I think that affects every aspect from engineering to projects to hydro—the worker safety. I think education and training is the key to everything and that is the biggest accomplishment. Of course, it’s morphed into pretty incredible public information programs now. which is part of that education.
Secondly, it’s just bringing everybody in the industry together and working as one group. I think that’s also great, and it all comes back to Peter Schaerer.
Finally, I know you haven’t been directly involved with the industry in a while. But do you have any thoughts on the future and what challenges the future might hold for the CAA and our industry?
Well, I think it’s probably the same theme, but it’s reaching more people in terms of education and training. More and more people want to go on and recreate in in the backcountry. I think it’s effectively reaching those people, getting them training. I think that’s the big challenge.
I’m sure money is always a challenge, but that’s just something that is pretty common to everything. But in terms of the avalanche business, I think just keeping on developing more ways to reach people and educate people, train them, and keep people safe.
Again, I’m not in the industry. I’m sure there will be technical challenges, but I imagine the challenge is still going to be is that avalanche gonna be at 3:21 or 3:22, That’s the forecasting challenge. But that’s one of the reasons we love the industry.
Based on what I saw at ISSW, I think they’re getting closer to solving that problem.
Thanks so much for your time, Geoff. I really enjoyed hearing your stories and getting to learn more about the early years of the CAA. I really appreciate this.
Well, thanks for making it happen and for the reminders.