Chris Stethem is a retired avalanche protection consultant living in Canmore, Alberta. A graduate in Geography from Queen’s University, Chris spent the 1970s overseeing the avalanche program at Whistler, BC and completing research projects for the National Research Council of Canada and Environment Canada. This work included compilation of the first two volumes of Avalanche Accidents in Canada (Stethem and Schaerer 1979, 1980), From 1979 to 2011 Chris worked as a consultant in planning, operations and training for avalanche programs in the Americas and overseas.
Chris was also a member of the founding Board of Directors for the Canadian Avalanche Association in 1981 and President of the CAA from 1988-1992, During this time, the Canadian Avalanche Centre in Revelstoke was formed to provide Avalanche Training Programs, the InfoEx and the Public Avalanche Bulletin. In 1998 Chris and a group of like-minded members of the community formed the Canadian Avalanche Foundation (now Avalanche Canada Foundation), a registered charity that raises funds to support public avalanche bulletins, education and research. Chris sat as President of the CAF for 12 years.
Here is the transcript of our interview with Chris Stethem:
Alex: Hello this is Alex Cooper. I’m here on behalf of the Canadian Avalanche Association History Project. We are interviewing key figures in the history of the CAA including past presidents, staff and other important people in the Canadian avalanche industry, with the goal of capturing the history of our association and the industry and preserve it for all time.
I’m here today with Chris Stethem at his home in Canmore, Alberta. Chris has been involved with the CAA since the very start and involved in the avalanche industry for several decades, and we’re here to talk to him and learn about his history in the industry and with the CAA. Thank you so much Chris, for your time.
Chris: You’re very welcome.
I’ll start with the question I’m asking everybody. What was your first exposure to avalanches. Whether that was seeing one in person or just becoming aware through the media or something else?
I started out as a volunteer ski patroller. We had a professional ski patrol but in the east in the late ‘60s. Sometime during that time period, in between that and going to university, I read about, it might have been an article by Peter Schaerer, I read about avalanches in some geomorphology publication. Then, I guess when I was working at Mont Tremblant in 1970 or ‘71 and I saw a little event around a cliff. I didn’t associate it with an avalanche, just snow falling off above a cliff. Then I moved to Whistler and just jumped right in there.
Where were you from originally?
Born in Kingston Ontario, to an army family.
Where did you learn how to ski?
Ottawa, at Camp Fortune in Ottawa. My dad was stationed there.
I have a friend who ski patrolled there for a while but probably after you were there.
That was in the early ‘50s.
So you grew up skiing.
Yes, and that’s really the connection, that ended me being in the avalanche field. Skiing, ski patrolling, and then avalanches.
I also read you got a geography degree. Where did you go to school?
Queens
OK. Did that play into your avalanche work?
Yes. Early on with the volunteer ski patrol, etc. Then I spent a couple of years at Queens, and I couldn’t stand the environment—that academic stuff wasn’t my thing—so I went off ski patrolling and avalanche working, and I went back in the summers and finished the degree in the summers.
So, when did you move out to Whistler? Was Whistler your first spot?
No, first I was in Edmonton, and I ski toured a bit in 1971, and then I went to work in Whistler in ’72.
’72. Was that the year after they had the big avalanche?
That summer, after that event.
What was that like? That was a big transition year for them and just generally the industry.
It was almost like wholesale change because all the people from before were gone. Some of them were still living in the valley, but there was only maybe one or two ski patrollers who came over from the year before. Maybe just the patrol leader and the assistant. Anyway, not very many guys, and then they hired a whole new (team). I think there were 14 of us.
What was your experience going into that, just a bit of patrolling?
Just ski patrolling. I had two years of professional patrol and two years volunteer patrol, so I knew about first aid.
So, you didn’t have any avalanche training going into that?
No.
What kind of training did you get at Whistler? What was the program like?
Well, that first year we had a training course from Norm Wilson. He came to set up an avalanche safety plan after the accident. They had avalanche work, but he formalized it. He gave us a training course and that would have been in December of ‘72 or November of ‘72.
So, right at the start of your season there.
Yes, then various things thereafter. There was a course the next year, what would have been called in those days an NRC (National Research Council) course, just as it was becoming BCIT. That would have been December of ‘73.
Those are the courses Peter Schaerer was teaching?
Yes
Did you take to avalanche work right away?
Oh yeah! It was by the second year I was the weather observer and basically did mostly avalanche work.
What was it about avalanche work that you took to or that you enjoyed so much?
I think it was because it was bigger than people. You couldn’t just take a D9 and change the shape of the mountain. I really appreciated the natural environment, and the sort of the power of nature and avalanche things are a perfect example. In that summer of 1972, when I was coming out to Whistler, we spent a bunch of time hiking in Rogers Pass and there was a whole shitload of big avalanches that had come down in that winter prior. So there were pick up sticks everywhere, like blocking trails. You were climbing through avalanche debris in the summer all over the place, wondering “What happened here, what is this?” It was a real. There was firewood everywhere. Free firewood everywhere along the highways.
So you hadn’t been exposed to avalanche work? Were you aware that all those trees were downed because of avalanches?
Yes. Oh yeah, I was aware of the words from school.
That had caused this kind of destruction. Toppled trees and stuff.
Yes, but I had no experience.
So what was it like, when you were involved with Whistler and they were formalizing their avalanche plan. What was it like being involved in that?
Well, it was perfect timing for me. I arrived with an interest in natural sciences and skiing and ski patrolling, and so it was kind of a shoe-in. Then, as I was finishing my university in the summers at that time, I tailored courses.
So what kind of courses did you take?
Oh, things like applied statistics, air photo interpretation, all that kind of stuff, for two years in physical geography.
How did you apply those courses into your avalanche interests?
Well, statistically, for example, we wrote a formal, complete avalanche control plan for Whistler in the late ‘70s, used statistics to come up with the parameters. And then the air photo interpretation, physical geography, of course. Air photo interpretation is essential to consulting and it used to be I had a big stereoscope for air photos. I did a ton of that during the course of my career.
So just using those photos to look at avalanche paths?
Yes. That’s how you figure out the history. Air photo work in Canada started right after the Second World War so you can really observe the changes over time.
Like learn how frequent avalanche paths were …..
When did the big guy come down? How often do those come down? Can you see old traces of past major events?
So, that kind of stuff, was that part of the plan that was put forward, or was that something you took, you had your own education and brought with you to Whistler?
I just took it. It was not … most of the stuff was operational avalanche control, was an outline, a 10-page outline of how to do it. So, there was no direct connection to my career other than I became friends with Norm (Wilson).
Okay, then what about avalanche control work and blasting? I guess you would have been involved with that right from the start?
That was right off the go. That was Norm’s focus when he came to Whistler. He was the man who invented the phrase: “The right place, the right time, the right explosive.” It was a fundamental expression for the avalanche control industry.
I guess back then that was …..
He came up with that in the ‘60s, and brought it to Whistler in the ‘70s.
John Hetherington that mentioned that you created the heli bombing program at Whistler.
Oh, that’s right. It was the first heli, not necessarily the first time a bomb was dropped out of a helicopter. That was at Granduc by Monte Atwater in 1965. He threw cases out the window to try to stabilize the snow.
We presented a proposal to Transport Canada in association with Okanagan Helicopters and that was approved by Transport Canada, so we were I guess the first formal procedure for heli-bombing to get established.
Whose idea was it to do heli-bombing?
Who’s idea was that? Probably Hugh Smythe, I would think. We were doing it the first year I was there, and then in the second year was when the proposal was approved and then it was huge. We did it all the time.
So, you were doing heli bombing before you had formalized plans and approvals?
Yes, a little bit. And then we really ramped it up when we got the approvals.
That’s a huge step I guess considering how prominent heli-bombing has become.
Oh, for sure, and there were a few examples. Parks used heli-bombing in prior winters and there were all kinds of crazy stories in the early days of heli-bombing. People learning the ropes as it were. For us it was perfect because it was a huge area of terrain, not very many skiers. We had more staff than skiers in mid-week, so we had to cover a lot of ground. And we did it with hand-charging and guns, and then that was sometime aided by the heli-bombing. You could do in an hour of heli-bombing what you could do in five hours on the ground.
Yes because back then there was no Peak chair or Harmony chair, but all that terrain was still impacting the ski area?
Oh yeah, we still did avalanche control in all that terrain.
So rather than hiking up there you could just fly up and drop a bomb and open stuff.
We had guns, Avalauncher guns, at lower elevations in all the bowls so you could fire at the targets.
But you found the heli-bombings more effective?
Yes. If you’ve ever been around an Avalauncher, it goes off, its quite deep and a small charge. A surface heli-bomb is much more effective.
So, you were in Whistler until the late-70s, I understand?
Yes ‘78-79 was my last winter there.
That’s when you went and formed Chris Stethem and Associates? During that time the Canadian Avalanche Committee existed. Were you involved with that at all?
I went to a meeting or two, but no, that was a government thing.
OK
That was Ron Perla, Dave Pick, Geoff Freer, and Peter Schaerer. Government people, representing Parks, NRC, BC Highways, and Environment Canada.
So, Ron Perla took me to one of those meetings and he was a shit disturber a bit. He said, “We should really have other people involved.” Just kind of an idea at the time, and I don’t know when that was. I’ll guess 1976, ‘75, somewhere in there. They had tried to get together an avalanche program, like a centre program, and that’s what they were talking about for a long time. But they couldn’t get it together because Geoff Freer lived in Victoria, where BC Highways head office was and he was their servant. Peter Schaerer lived in Vancouver and that’s where the NRC office was. Perla lived here in Canmore and his field station was at Sunshine, and his masters were in Saskatchewan for Environment Canada. Then Dave Pick was in Calgary with Parks, so they couldn’t… Revelstoke was the logical place. They all knew that in a sense. Peter was the only one who was willing to go there or who could go there.
And Revelstoke was the perfect place, right in the middle.
Yes, and Rogers Pass. That’s quite true. I think back, the experimentation that Noel Gardner did with artillery in the late ‘50s at Rogers Pass, maybe around 1959, 1960, that was the beginning of that.
You left Whistler to start your own company. What brought you into the consulting world? Were there consulting companies then or were you the first?
There weren’t. There were guys who did contract work now and then, here and there. I was riding up the gondola at Whistler one day with Perla and Schaerer, they both said to me there isn’t anybody in Canada doing this, you should do it because of my inclinations, education, whatever. This is how it would be, so I started a proprietorship and that was probably in 1977. I started doing contracts, a little bit of work here and there. I split my work between forecasting. I backed off running things at Whistler and became a forecaster, and I also ran a lab on top for Environment Canada, on top of a mountain doing fracture line research.
Was that a cold lab?
Yes, for Ron Perla.
I think John (Hetherington) mentioned that as well, bringing in the crystals and studying them.
So, I’d do the forecasting in the morning and in the afternoon I’d go to the lab.
The cold lab—what were you studying there and looking for?
We were trying initially to identify the sort of typical layer that would form an avalanche. Of course, time could have told us there was no typical layer. There were a lot of different kinds of problems. But we got to document those over time and started looking at the terrain, the snowpack construction, the trigger. Then as far as physical properties of the snow, density, and ….
Why was that work seen as important?
Everybody was trying to figure out things in those years and come up with the best research they could so this was Ron Perla’s initiative. He started it in Sunshine and then he just got me involved in Whistler because there were avalanches, I guess. So anyway, we documented lots of avalanches over time and then published a paper on that in 1979.
Okay, then in ‘79 that’s when you take your company full time. Who were your clients? Who did you start working for?
Well, it would be BCIT. They hired me quite early on to develop a bunch of problems for the avalanche courses. There was one called the Robert Frost problem which was famous and lasted probably 30 years.
Colani (Bezzola) told me about that yesterday.
Yes. He and I put it together. Exactly. So that was problem one, the first. What else? Early on, I did a lot of work for mining companies up north in the Yukon and Northwest Territories in the early ‘80s and wrote a formal control plan for Whistler. That was probably one of the first things, I think in 1980 or something like that. Otherwise, I would have to look to see who I was working for.
No, I’m guess I’m just curious. Who were the companies or the demands for avalanche consulting at that time. Right now I know you have tons of mining operations and railways and whatnot that have …..
Mining and railways were our early clients. We started with CN in the early 1980s and ski areas still. All the various ski areas, I worked for them at one time or another. One early client was Fernie come to think of it. They had had, in 1979 they had avalanches destroy their chairlift and I went there the next year I think. I’d have to look, but I think it was the next winter, to help them develop their program.
So, you were doing that work at ski resorts. How much formal avalanche …. Did ski resorts have formal programs?
Some. Again it was like Whistler was sort of a little bit looser you might say than it would be today, but it really relied on the knowledge of people. There was a lot of experienced people around, but in many cases they never wrote down what they did, or they wrote it down very briefly. I think if you talk to the National Parks guys—I’m sure you will—they had a lot of experienced guys for many years but they didn’t really have any formal documentation until quite late in the Parks ski area tenure.
I guess in Fernie …. was Bruce Jamieson working there at the time?
No that was 10 years before. Not 10 years, but a few years. This was Dave Aikens, he was hired that year, I think that year, he had worked in Rogers Pass in previous years and was hired by Heiko Socher to run the program.
Tell me about discussions in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. The CAA was formed in 1981. Can you tell me what the discussions were like in the avalanche industry leading up to the formation of the CAA?
It started in the ‘70s for a variety of reasons. There had been accidents in the ‘70s where there had been recommendations from the coroner, twice I believe, to exchange information to have better communication, and that inspired the InfoEx. There was the Avalanche Committee. The schools really were what we congealed around, because those of us who were instructors in schools were called to spring meetings by Peter every year, and then those meetings grew sort of by osmosis, more people came along. People who were sort of senior people in the industry, were sort of interested in instruction, but had full time jobs, so we all ended up meeting in the spring.
Then, suddenly, or at some point in the late ‘70s, the meeting of avalanche instructors became the Avalanche Safety Operators meetings. So then there was all the people from avalanche safety operations were invited by Peter to come to meetings. I would say that might have started around ‘79 and there was a meeting in Banff. I think somebody was kicking this idea around again, it might have been Brian Waitman from the Canadian Ski Patrol that said you should become an Association.
I don’t know if anything serious was done about it, but in the next year, in 1980, I think, it was formally proposed that we should form an Association at that safety operators meeting. So, then we went around and got a small group together to be the original board, if you like. Applicants, you needed a certain number of applicants to get an approval under the Society’s Act, which is where we started. We are still under the Societies Act, in that regard, and that was in British Columbia.
So, I want to say, I could look and figure it out exactly, but I think in the summer of 1980 we put those applications together and my lawyer in Squamish was a guy named Harley Paul, put the papers together for the BC government. They approved it and we had our first formal meeting I think in the spring of ‘81. Peter became the first President. I can’t remember who sat on the board then, but whatever number, there was Peter, Geoff Freer from highways, myself.
Fred Schleiss.
No. Walter Schleiss, and Herb Bluer and Willi Pfisterer. I think that was it. I’m not sure who the Associate Member’s person was in the very beginning. I’d have to look. I’ve got the paper somewhere.
What were the qualifications to be a member in 1980 or ‘81 when you formed?
Chris: That’s a very good question. I think, without looking at the writing, I think you had to be a full-time, full-time involvement in the avalanche profession in some way shape or form, that could have been rescue, avalanche control, research whatever, and you had to have at least two years’ experience in formal application of avalanche safety work, avalanche control, research, you name it. I think it was two years. And that was it. And people applied. So, there it was. I have the original list actually, I think there was about 40-odd people that signed up.
When I was looking through old issues of Avalanche News to prepare for this I found one where it said there was 70-odd members, this was in the late ‘80s when you were President. It started very small. Now there’s over 1,000 members, or something like that.
It could well be. When we made the application there were seven of us. That first meeting I’m pretty sure I have a list of names there, there were 40 or 41. I could give that to you if I dug for it.
I don’t need that. But you formed this Association—what were some of the first things as an Association that you felt you had to take on?
We had five goals I think in the original registration document. They included, not necessarily in this order, they included education, research, public information, a resource, and professionalism, but again I should look to see what those things were.
Was standardization something you were focused on?
Yes, they were big in the ‘80s and even in the ‘70s. The first guidelines I think were written in 1979 and were published in 1980. They were an offshoot of the schools. They were an offshoot of the old Rogers Pass documents, largely around how you observe the weather and that sort of thing.
What were the big challenges you were facing when you were trying to get the CAA started up?
Well, the same challenges everybody faces in terms of money. How do you pay for what you do? I think recognition or legitimacy, or whatever you want to call it. You are seeking recognition, so trying to get your name out there to become recognized as the body representing. That happened, but it took a few years, the first 10 years, to really get established until this thing was running.
Oh that’s right …. one of those five mandates was a public avalanche information.
How that came to be? We used those original concepts. Because that had three proposals: the schools, the InfoEx, and the Centre. I think a library that furthered those five original goals.
Was there any staff at that point or was it all volunteer-driven?
It was all voluntary. I think the first person hired who was Inge Anhorn and that was in ’89-90— could have been one of the two—to be the secretary for the schools. And then Cal Fenwick was hired as the InfoEx operator for the winter in 1990-91, I think. And then Alan (Dennis) was hired in the summer of 1991. Colani and I were the representatives on the board who hired Alan.
So those first 10 years, there was no professional … it was all volunteer driven, the courses?
The courses were paid. That was something. BCIT’s involvement starting in the ‘70s was huge, an organized approach to education, so they handled all the administration and financial balance, and we handled the content and delivery. But they were the ones who had the handle on the financial balance and the courses were pretty much always self-supporting from the beginning, and I think they are still part of the annual revenues of the CAA. But they were self-supporting before the CAA existed.
When you mentioned courses, you took your first course when you were in Whistler. When did you start teaching courses yourself?
Well, it was actually the second year, I did a demonstration for the first avalanche course. That was in that letter I wrote about Peter, but that was just throwing a hand charge, helping. I would think the first time I became involved as an assistant instructor must have been about 1975-76, somewhere in there. I was a patrol leader at Whistler and somebody probably asked me to help in some way shape or form. Then by ‘77 I was a full instructor, and then involved in all kinds of courses.
So then there was Level 1. Was there a level 2?
There was a Level 1. That was the original course in ’73. And then in ‘74 they had a course at Whistler called an Avalanche Forecasting Seminar. That was kind of a precursor of an advanced course but that involved all the you-name-its of avalanche work in Western Canada, came to Whistler for that. Freddy and Walter (Schleiss) came and guys from CMH came, and all the Parks guys came. Anyway, they had this course for about 35 people. Guys came down from Granduc. I use the words guys loosely, because in those days there were no women working in the profession. There certainly have been many since. So that was, and you may have seen a famous set of pictures of two guys standing, watching an avalanche on Little Whistler where you can see the crack form and then things start sliding, and jump over the moraine, through the trees. Anyways it’s a famous picture.
I haven’t seen those. That’s from that course. That was a controlled avalanche?
Yes, sort of controlled. We had a little problem with the gas supply for the guns, so we leaked most of the way and only had a little amount so we put the charger in the Avalauncher and it landed right at the bottom of Little Whistler. The propagation, you know, that was the first time I ever saw the wave. The propagation went up, all the way up the slope, and then you saw the fracture line form.
Oh, wow! That must have been something else.
Yes, it was very informative. I knew propagation existed, but I’d never seen the wave. Once you’ve seen the wave you kind of go, “Wow, that’s amazing!” because it is truly a wave.
That’s fascinating. How long did you teach for?
Until 2010.
So, you really enjoyed teaching?
Oh yeah. I used to encourage people, I think, to give back to the profession. You’d get people who were involved full-time to take one week off. Everyone pursued that goal. That was fundamental to the success of the courses. You didn’t just want to just have professional teachers. You had to have people who were working.
And that helps diversify. I did the Level 1 and had a ski guide, James Blench, as one of my instructors. Jock Richardson who had done ski patrol and all sorts of other stuff, and then my third instructor was a newer one who works at what’s now Sasquatch Resort near Chilliwack. He was the third instructor on my course.
Sasquatch Resort?
Hemlock Valley. I think it’s being rebranded as Sasquatch. Definitely having three different perspectives, different levels of experience, and teaching styles.
That was one of my earlier clients too. Hemlock Valley.
I always thought it was a small place, but he says they have a decent, reasonable avalanche problem there.
So, you became CAA President in eighty ….
In ’88. And I wasn’t even there.
Alex: How did you get tapped for that role?
I don’t know. Darren Stinson came up to me after the election and said, “So, we just elected you President, what do you think of that? Is that okay?”
So, you hadn’t put your name forward, but you’d been on the Board?
I was on the board from ‘81-84, and I left so they could get more diversity, get more people involved. I think Geoff Freer and I left the same year, and then I came back in ’88.
So, why did they choose you?
Just involvement over the years. I think at the time I was involved in the Education Committee or schools, and we were sort of in the process of taking it over and so that all followed.
Because the schools were with BCIT, and then I understand Selkirk College briefly.
For a year, and then NRC, CAA for a year, in 1988-89 maybe, and then it became CAA in ’89-90. Inge Anhorn was the registrar, the local administrator in the winter of ’88-89, and then in the winter of ’89-90 she worked for the CAA.
When you came on board as President what were the main things? The schools thing was a big deal.
The schools, the InfoEx, and then the rest of that.
I guess InfoEx had been talked about by that point? Was there much formal ….
No, there was an exchange in CMH, called the SCED, where they would talk on the VHF radio at night, what they observed. It was essentially modelled after that. If nothing else, we should be telling each other when we see avalanches.
Yes, so that was coming around when you became President or had that only come around with the Canadian Avalanche Centre?
That’s when we started the InfoEx. The CMH thing before that was informal, and some areas talked informally. Obviously, the Parks guys and the different ski areas would talk informally, and neighbors across the street would talk informally. That was the first. Cal actually wrote the software in December of that year that enabled it.
The Canadian Avalanche Centre, people think of it today, they think of what was formed in 2004. The new incarnation. This first incarnation in 2000 …. Sorry in 1990.
That was it. The 2004 thing was more of a PR thing to get funding because they wanted to go Federal. We were always provincial, we were BC and Alberta registration. So that federal registration, they made a big deal out of that, because of course you get lots of support. We made it a national organization, but it was not the beginning of the Canadian Avalanche Centre.
So, what did you have to do to get the Canadian Avalanche Centre established?
Search around for a bit of money and support from all the different industries. It was a big advantage for me, having been working in consulting, I knew almost everybody and I’d worked for a lot of them so I could ask the different players to support the idea and then from there it blossomed, because if you go back before that, in the earlier years or the dark ages or whatever you want to call them, people didn’t talk that much. There were some pretty strong rivalries between different people in the industry. The InfoEx was how they all came to agree. It was the first time they all could sit down with a piece of paper and talk.
Was it hard to convince all these different operators to pool … come up with some resources and funding to create the avalanche centre?
Well no. You’ll see the budgets. They were pretty sparse. The schools were the big initial player and then the InfoEx was designed to be self-supporting. I think the original fee might have been a thousand bucks or something. But the idea was we would get enough people to pay for that service, and we did. So, it was essentially self-sufficient. We had support from a lot of really important people if you like, in the industry and in government, so it grew by word of mouth, by osmosis, and it survived financially by small amounts of money. We didn’t have that $100,000 dollars that we were aiming for until the end of the ‘80s. We had a chunk of money. In 1988, in Whistler there was an ISSW, and we had 7,000 bucks in profit, and that $7000 we used many times. That was the original bond for the avalanche schools when you had to post a bond with the provincial government because they were worried about schools folding up and not repaying the fees. So, you had to have a bond, that was that. It also helped further conferences and you name it.
Was that the article you wrote about Peter (in Volume 130 of the Avalanche Journal) when somebody, said …..
Walter (Schleiss)—that we should get 100,000 bucks.
And it took a decade to get there.
But that was actually in my time as President. That $7,000 was not dedicated, so you could start initiatives with it.
So, InfoEx gets established. Back then it was faxes, that was the original. People assembling, getting the data, faxing it and compiling it and faxing it back overnight
So, it would hopefully be in your inbox before your morning meeting.
So, the third component was the public avalanche bulletin. What spurred that? You mentioned that was a goal of the CAA in 1981.
It was an original goal. The Parks had a small public avalanche bulletin areas. First—Clair Isrealson would be able tell you that—I would think it was Lake Louise area. But somewhere in the Parks, either Banff or Jasper. Of course, Rogers Pass was there, but I don’t think they disseminated much information to the public. Somewhere between those there were public avalanche bulletins. The idea was there. And there were bulletins in other parts of the world. Europe had lots and there were a couple in the States just getting going.
OK. What did the bulletin look like in 1990-91? I think I’ve seen one. Pretty much all text, or mostly text?
Yes, because you’re not talking about computers or tables or anything like that. I think it was purely text. I don’t think there was any numeric element. Again, I could probably—Alan would have the words in his head from writing those first bulletins.
Who wrote those bulletins? Alan wrote all of them?
Chris: Alan was the first guy, and then I think Cal worked with Alan initially. And then he was gone and then Torstein Gelzinger took over the InfoEx role and worked with Alan for the flip-flop thing. He might have been the first person we really called Alan’s assistant, and then from there.
And these early bulletins, we talk about how big the regions are today, but back then it must have been even broader in scope?
That’s an interesting question. Broader regions, I think they were the same for a long time and probably still are to a degree. Early on, we thought the goal should be to get the bulletin to seven days. We didn’t realize the more important task was to move it to smaller geographic areas. Recognize the key to European bulletins—in Switzerland there’s 60 of them, all these little areas. Perhaps not seven days a week, as you often as you can make it, and that evolved over the years.
So, the Canadian Avalanche Centre. That was a key part of your Presidency. Were there any other issues?
At the end there was the explosives. We had a kerfuffle with WorkSafeBC about. They wanted people to arm the charges on the slope. They did not want pre-armed hand charges. Pre-armed hand charges was how the avalanche industry had worked forever and some people argued that it was dangerous. If someone fired a rifle at your back, and you had explosives on your back, you’d blow up. The odds of somebody shooting you in the back when you were carrying explosives was fairly low. So that was a nonsensical argument.
What we did, we first wrote, I think when I was still President, to WorkSafe BC and told them they were causing a hazard to workers. That didn’t go over very well. There was quite a lot of fur flying, so we hired the Canadian Explosives Research Laboratory in Ottawa to do the hand charge testing project. I’d have to look to see the official name of the report is. You’ve got it in the CAA. It’s the CERL, Canadian Explosive Research Laboratory Report on hand charge sensitivity.
Anyway, they did a whole bunch of … they had a whole lab in Ottawa. They did a whole bunch of hammer drop tests and various tests that contained explosions, and they concluded that it was much easier to set off a cap than it was a hand charge and that the real risk was skiing around with caps, rather than putting the hand charge, the cap in the hand charge, where it was protected. The detonation velocities, which were required in an object with a hammer or drop, they were much lower for caps than they were for hand charges. We took this back to WorkSafeBC and they said, “OK, great.” I think I was finished then. I was on the Explosives Committee when that was all settled. It was the year after my presidency they smiled.
Was there a blasting course back then? Did that exist?
There was a blasting course way back in the ‘70s. I’d have to look …. I probably have a record somewhere, but there was a blasting course given. It was either in Lake Louise or Whistler, I don’t know, but there were 20-odd participants I would say. Again, I could probably find the file on it. But they were gone, there wasn’t another blasting course until I would say the 1990s perhaps and when the first course was, I don’t know. Certainly, the blasting course became more formal in the 2000s. I would guess it was the 1990s and I would guess that because WorkSafe wanted people to be formally trained. I would think they supported the idea, but you’d have to look elsewhere.
But in terms of the training component, training all these ski patrollers and avalanche control workers and what not to handle explosives, yes that’s a pretty key component of the job.
In the early avalanche courses, we used to teach blasting a little bit. So, they’d see a bit of hand charging and watch a couple of control measures and get lectures in avalanche control on the blasting side. So that existed, but it wasn’t formalized.
Maybe we can shift focus a little bit, back to your consulting. Maybe, some of the more interesting projects you got to work on as a consultant.
Well, there was a lot of them. There were hundreds of clients over the years. More interesting ones …. I think one certainly would have been the Alpine Meadows avalanche. There was an avalanche in Alpine Meadows California in about 1982.
There’s a documentary that just has come out about that.
So, that accident was litigated in 1985 and I was hired by the defense along with Liam Fitzgerald and Andre Roark to help present our expert opinions in defense of the ski area. Ed LaChapelle and the long-time engineer in the U.S., Art Mears, was representing the plaintiff. But anyway, that was really fascinating work and involved collating and putting together a lot of stuff to try figure out what had happened. It was the first time I’d been involved as an expert witness so that was really interesting.
The Olympics… that was interesting.
Whistler?
No before that. Before Whistler. I went to Sarajevo, because I got involved here in ‘88. That’s why I moved to Canmore, for the ’88 Olympics, for the early preparation. I started working here in ‘81 on the highways and parks and ski hills to put all that together, but so I went from here and also got involved in Salt Lake and then in Sochi, I put an avalanche control plan together for Sochi.
I’ve been to Sarajevo but I was there in the 2000s and you were there in the ‘80s
I was there before the troubles.
That must have been fascinating. I know you went to Chile as well. You went all over the world as a consultant.
Yes, I got to work most everywhere. I never worked in the Himalayas. That would be about the only mountain range, a prominent one.
And these were all sorts of operations, mines, ski resorts.
Yes, a real Heinz 57 of possibilities. Early on, more ski-related and then more mining, and industry-related. One really interesting project in Canada was the Five Mountain Parks Highway Avalanche Study, which we finished in about 1991 or so, and that involved myself, Bruce (Jamieson), Peter (Schaere) and a guy named Jason. Anyway, he became, the wind guy, the wind power out in Alberta. So, we did that for all the mountain parks and it was looking at all the highway avalanche programs, the risk and profile, and what was done. The costs down to new tires and what would a good idea for future.
It sounds like a huge project.
It was, especially because it encompassed Rogers Pass. There was a vast amount of churning through stuff, but again I was lucky because I knew all the people.
And you had a pretty strong team. Peter Schaerer started working for you. When I asked Joe Obad what are some the things I should talk about with Chris Stethem one of the things he brought up was that a lot of people who are now leaders in the industry would have worked under you or with you at some point.
That’s possible. And Peter, when the NRC went down in 1990, he came and worked with me after that.
What was your involvement in avalanche research through this time? You mentioned doing a wind lab.
Off and on. My focus was more on consulting, but I did a little bit of stuff off and on with Bruce, sort of second author on some of his work and more what you would call applied work in a whole bunch of operations to come up with parameters for either rule-based or expert decision-making parameters for forecasting and control. So, it was a few papers along the way, and I was asked to write a few papers, general papers about avalanches. There were a couple of European guys who wrote these, the definitive books on natural hazards and on snow and that type of stuff, so I contributed to a few of those.
You also co-wrote the first volume or the first two volumes of Avalanche Accidents in Canada.
I worked on the first three actually. I went to Peter. That’s an interesting one. I went to the national avalanche school in Seattle in 1973 and I met Dale Gallagher and read his book, which was avalanche accidents, I can’t remember what it was called exactly, but it was avalanche accidents in the U.S., and he prepared that right at the end of the ‘60s, beginning of the ‘70s, and published it. I thought this was the best thing I ever read about learning about other people’s experiences. So, I went to Peter and made an unsolicited proposal to write one for Canada, and he thought it was a great idea, typical Peter, and he put the proposal together to the NRC.
So, I worked under contract for them, in, I would guess the summers of 1976 and 1978 on those first two volumes, something like that. I gathered all the stuff. Ron Perla was an important contributor, he had done a bunch of previous work so gave me all his files, Peter gave me his files, Parks, everybody, and of course Peter opened the doors—talk to this guy and so on. The first one was published around about 1980, ‘79 or ‘80 when they first came out. So, I did the first two with Peter, and then he did the third one, and I did 15 case histories in that one for him.
Now I think there are four or five. I can’t remember what we’re up to now.
Bruce wrote at least two, maybe three.
I know they are talking about digitizing, bringing it up to 2022 at some point in the near future.
Mine was sort of a scattering approach, especially the first volume. We were looking at everything from accidents that happened in the Parks in the ‘50s, Granduc in the ‘60s, various heli-skiing accidents in the ‘70’s. A real smorgasbord. A lot of those early ones were also communities, places like Ocean Falls and Terrace, Granduc, the mine, places that had been shmucked with workers.
And at some point, you also realized there were avalanches in Eastern Canada and I guess they get incorporated in.
They did. I can’t remember which volume. Quite early on we found out about the accident in Toronto. That set the standard for me thereafter. Two kids were killed on the side of a ravine in Toronto, I can’t remember their names, Markham. In different parts of Toronto there are these ravines that go through it, and they knocked the cornice off and got buried. There was a big hullaballoo in Toronto. They searched for they thought it was a predator and then they found the kids buried in the snow.
What did you learn compiling those books?
You name it. What kind of terrain did this happen on? What was the weather? What was the snowpack? What were the people doing? What was the trigger? Every aspect. I always thought if you wanted to learn about avalanches, you should actually look at some cases. Look at the real thing.
Going back to the ‘90s you were president of the CAA for five or six years.
Five years, that was the term. ‘88–93.
How did you stay involved after you stepped down as President?
The Explosives Committee, and the teaching. Eventually I ended up being kind of the senior, remaining guy in the teaching as time went on, so carry that thread through, keep the traditions going and I think just when I was asked to do something. Would you get involved in this or that committee or whatever?
Okay, what caused you to have this pull, this sense of duty for the industry. What brought that about, that sense of duty?
I thought that this was a remarkable group of people. The world has a lot of not so pretty parts to it, and I thought that this was a very interesting group of people. They were strong individuals, they respected each other, they worked in a foreboding environment. All those things caught me. I guess because I came from a service background, my family were a military family for generations, so that idea of service was not foreign. I think really the people and the knowledge that you just couldn’t just bring out a bulldozer and push this away. This was bigger than people and great people were involved. As a geographer, I was always very interested in natural landscapes and the great outdoors.
Then you became the founding President of the Canadian Avalanche Foundation in ‘99.
I don’t know if it was ‘98 or ’99.
One of those years. Is that something we were asked to do?
That is something we were talking about with the Association and had been talking about for a while and then they wanted to start a non-profit to raise money. And then somebody pointed out that you can’t do that. You can’t be a professional Association and a non-profit, or a registered charity. We had to start something new to be a registered charity. So, it was a group of people who were strongly interested. That first board included Hans Gmoser, Peter Schaerer, Peter Fuhrman, Margaret Trudeau and then of course ….
Gord Ritchie.
Yes Gord. Who else? Is that it … yes perhaps. I’d have to look.
And this came about after the avalanche where Michel Trudeau died.
Well, that happened the year we were formulating. So, the idea had been formulated and we had met, and I think, here, maybe in Peter Fuhrman’s office or something. We met and talked about it and during that winter Michel was killed and so that following spring, John Tweedy introduced me to Margaret because he’d been in charge of the search for Michel. He and Dave Smith had been very involved. He introduced me to Margaret, and I went and saw her, met her in Ottawa, and asked her if she’d like to be involved and she was all for it.
That’s quite the key relationship unfortunately on very unfortunate circumstances.
Throughout the whole Foundation thing there were people who had loss, who wanted to get involved. That was hugely powerful from the Broscos, the Hincks, they were big factors. And of course, Margaret and Justin, same thing, he had the same interest, he had greater interest than his mother. He wanted to understand. He was a good skier, he wanted to understand what his brother was so taken by.
So, you were involved in the Foundation for a number of years. Until you got sick?
Until 2010. The year before Gord took over, and then I got sick a year after.
Did you enjoy actively fundraising?
I was involved in the active fundraising. I was not the best fundraiser. The best fundraisers were the people in the community, wherever that was. Whether it was somebody involved in the mountaineering community or somebody that was involved in oil and gas, like Bosco’s in Calgary or Trudeau’s knowledge. Out in Whistler there was—I have to think about names—but there was a couple of people in the Whistler community who were affluent and involved and interested in starting these things up. Really, I was the one who sort of went and approached these people and said would you like to get involved, and then they would go out.
So, you retired in 2010 or 2011 for health issues?
2011. Yes. I never did any work in the field after. I gave a lecture in 2014, maybe one or two to CMH after the accident.
Do you want to go back out?
I would have liked to, but I had some serious mental problems that lasted for a few years so that just wasn’t possible.
That’s too bad and unfortunate to hear.
I lost the ability to read, which was kind of a fundamental to work.
I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.
It took a while, learning how to read again.
So, I guess, there’s kind of two more questions that we’re asking everybody but I’m trying to think of what I might have missed asking you about? Are there any other key developments with the CAA or the industry that we haven’t covered yet? We’re talking 40 or 50 years?
That’s a long time.
We talked a bit about courses and the InfoEx, starting the public bulletins, the Foundation.
That explosives thing, the hand charge thing, that was fundamental. That was very important to all the people doing ski area work, very important, and all the people doing heli-bombing. What else was very important? There’s just so much over the time to remember. I’ll do this, I’ll just look at the title of these and it might help with something (Note: Chris has a large file filled with CAA documents).
Different AGM’s, personnel, insurance—that sounds boring.
Yes, we had to go out and get insurance. One of the things that was big for all of us was called Instructional Techniques Courses. BCIT started these in the ‘70s and everybody would get together for these courses. They’d have their teaching professionals saying you can’t do that, or you can’t do this. I think the first time I was told you couldn’t centre somebody out. If someone was wrong, we’d go after them in the course. They taught us in this course you can’t do that. You’ve got to be a little gentler in how you approach them. It changed a lot of us.
Quite the files. The different AGM minutes. How did the spring conference evolve over the years? You mentioned there was a spring meeting of avalanche operators.
It was that. It was firstly the instructors of avalanche observations, in the late ‘70s and then in the end of the ‘70s we became the avalanche safety operators, and then there was the hiring of Alan Dennis.
And that just grew and grew as the CAA expanded and eventually became this annual meeting in Penticton?
It was an annual meeting from 1981 on. I don’t remember when the first one in Penticton was, but we all figured out pretty quickly that we wanted to go to Penticton, and we didn’t want to go to Revelstoke for the meeting. So, there were fiscally responsible people trying to propose several times over the years trying to have our meeting somewhere more economical, but they lost,
Because you were finished with winter.
Are you kidding? We’re going to Penticton! It’s sunny there.
Revelstoke can be nice in the beginning of May, but it’s not that nice.
Oh, the guidelines were huge. We did the OGRS a few times.
Were you very involved in the OGRS?
Early on, I contributed to some parts to it. But I would have to look to see which years I might have been involved in. Peter was the one who did the first one. We pitched in and I did some specific research projects. The OGRS were Peter, and Peter deserves all the credit for that.
Because that’s pretty foundational; you need standards if you’re teaching courses, and then that plays into the InfoEx so people are all sharing the same information.
So, this might have some really incredible things. This is from the Education Committee.
Okay this is when we first got involved in public stuff, in 1983, to come up with a standard for an introductory avalanche course.
Like recreational.
RAC, Before RAC, I think it was called Introduction to Avalanches. So we took some bits and pieces that Willi (Pfisterer) had used in Jasper for warden training, and some bits that Geoff Freer had used for Parks people training. There was half-a-dozen different people who had made some attempts at training recreationists before, so then we came up with this meeting and standardized that, and that would have been in the spring of ‘83 or maybe ‘84. In 1984 in Lake Louise. From ’84 we had an Introductory Avalanche Course outline and that evolved.
That became the RAC (Recreational Avalanche Course) and then AST (Avalanche Skills Training) eventually? Were you directly involved in setting that curriculum?
No. I was actually the one who put it together, but I used other people’s experience and knowledge. To say I, you have to be pretty careful with that word. I guess I was maybe the Chair of the Educational Committee so for some reason I organized that.
Do you remember what was in the curriculum of those early courses?
I probably have a case study as an example. I haven’t looked in this file in forever.
Now they focus on terrain.
Here we are. A draft of the two-day …. This is Janis’s comment on making it better. Ron Matthews was very involved in the mountaineering committee, James Blench for Yamnuska, Ernie Klaus was involved in the FMC BC, they are all there. (Searching through files)
All these people, when I go on a trip, I do this and a lot of people had avalanche rescue courses because it was easy. That was one aspect of the avalanche work that you could teach since the 19th century was you had to dig. It was not very complicated.
How widespread were transceivers in the 1980s?
Oh quite. They came along in the ‘70s. When I started, we didn’t have them, but by the mid-70s they were pretty well accepted. Then by the recreational public at the end of the ‘70s or the ‘80s, they started to accept them. It became cool. When they first came out, and I would guess this was, I was still working in Whistler, but some of the European clothing manufacturers came out with a clear pocket in the front of the jacket, only for a year or two, so you could put your transceiver there. I always thought it was a marketing thing so you could see who was cool, with this in your pocket. It didn’t last.
Your jacket is not the best place to carry your transceiver.
A lot of people carried it in their jacket for many years. I carry it in my jacket pocket now because I have an insulin pump. If it’s too close to a chest harness. Carry it in your pants pocket well away from other devices. But the harness is definitely the best.
Now they make ski pants with the little pocket for the transceiver. That’s the new thing. I think a lot of people, if you’re going uphill, you take your jacket off.
Yes, guides forever always carried it in their pocket, or in their chest pocket so you can get at it quickly. Jeez there’s lots of people’s stuff here. There’s the handwritten one. Here we are … Introductory Avalanche Awareness Course and that is dated … it’s something, oh that’s where it’s filed. But anyway, this is it.
I’m just looking at it: “At the end of the course students should be able to identify basic hazard situations, state the methods of enhancing personal and group safety in avalanche terrain, perform effectively in a search and rescue situation.”
Yes, and that’s obviously the …. all the comments came in. So, there’s a little bit on avalanche terrain, formation of avalanches, recognition, safety measures. There was one classroom day and one field day.
That format has pretty much lasted until today. That’s still kind of what it is for the introductory course. You can do it on a weekend. Now people are doing the classroom stuff online, over the past few years but the fundamental idea was like that.
Everything has changed over the last few years. In terms of how we communicate or how we learn.
So, what do you think is the biggest accomplishment of the CAA in its 40-odd year history?
I would say it’s two-fold. I would say for the personnel involved, its professionalism for the people who actually do the work. Professionalism, standards, decent training courses, but all in the name of professionalism for that group of people. Then I would say for the public it was that and its iterations thereafter, or that idea. The Canadian Avalanche Centre and eventually spinning it off into its own.
If you look at the objectives of the Association that was one of them. That was the last objective, the public bulletin, and then it was spun off over time. In those five original objectives which I could find, somewhere in there (folders) that was one of the last ones to be realized.
You’ve been retired for 10 years now and mentioned you haven’t been much involved since then, but do you have any thoughts on what the big issues the CAA needs to tackle going forward?
Well I think the … it’s not an issue to tackle, but the maintenance of professional standards I would say is the most important. The emergence of all the professional associations, the different interests.
The first time we met with in the 1990s with the professional engineers, they said, what are you guys doing here? What does this have to do with engineering? When you look at it today, you can change their tunes quite a bit. So a lot of different technical associations and groups, are trying to get—I don’t want to use turf—but it is turf. Trying to have some auspices of their areas of work. So, the CAA is a very important vehicle to stand up for people in the profession and the needs of the profession regardless of whether it’s the government or industry or individuals or other associations.
So, if you go back to the original goals: education, InfoEx, now that’s spun off public bulletins, but it’s still totally dependent on the InfoEx, without that you’d be hooped. And I think another interesting deal to keep together will be strangely enough field skills. Because if you look at the last pandemic times, people were doing everything, everything is online and over the course of time you need avalanche training programs. Everything became—what’s the name of that program, the Microsoft program? The original one to make overheads?
PowerPoint.
Everybody got PowerPointed to death, but then there was some reaction against PowerPoint. Then along came the pandemic and all the iterations since, Zoom and whatever, and people are saying, now we are all going to do this remotely and communicate and not get together. Making sure that people get field experience, exposure. Like, for example, an academic program would be a perfect example. You really want to make sure you get your people out into the field and Bruce always did that with his programs, but it’s fundamental because without that field experience you’re sunk. If you’ve never seen an avalanche, it’s pretty hard to become an avalanche expert.
And along that line, going back to an in-person conference that happened this year.
Totally. The biggest learning sessions have always been over a beer or over lunch after the fact, at the end of the day. And the people you’d meet, going back to when I started. It’s a fascinating group of people. Of course, nowadays it’s much bigger and much more diverse. I’m sure it’s that much more fascinating.
How many people show up for a spring meeting now?
200-plus.
Yeah, and you can still do that in Penticton.
Yes, still at the Convention Centre. I don’t know the exact numbers but it felt similar to 2019 in terms of numbers. Smaller scale; they didn’t have the CPD sessions that they had previously. They kind of just made it the AGM and a then a day-and-a-half of case studies and presentations, that kind of thing. So, I think some people hung around a bit longer just to see old friends, that kind of stuff and have some other meetings.
That’s cool. Do you know when Anton Horvath gets his Honorary Membership? Did he do it already?
He got it at the conference. There was some technical reason. He was given it at the conference. I think officially he becomes an Honorary Member this fall. It has to be X-number of months after retirement. He got it.
I wanted to go to it if it was ….
No, that happened in the spring. I talked to Anton a bit…
He’s a good guy, lots of experience.
Yes, 40 years. Did you work with him in Whistler a bit?
He started just at the end of me, I would say, and the same with Jan Tindale. Actually, it might have both been at the end of me but not very far after.
Well, I’m not sure there’s anything else to talk about, but if we need to we can do a part two if something comes up.
I really appreciate your time. It’s been really fascinating to learn about this history from you.
Well you are very welcome. It’s good that you are doing this. It’s timely or it will be lost.
Transcribed by Susan Hairsine, August 22, 2023
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