Canada's avalanche safety system, which has successfully reduced deaths among backcountry skiers, is now focusing its attention on snowmobilers, a disparate community that previously hadn't been specifically addressed.
"We're a different breed of cat," said Al Hodgson, president of the Association of B.C. Snowmobile Clubs.
Seven years ago, the Canadian avalanche safety business was shaken when 14 people - including seven teenagers on a school trip - died in two massive slides in British Columbia's rugged Selkirk Mountains.
Until that deadly winter, Canada's avalanche safety system was a fractured patchwork. Bulletins that warned of dangers were difficult to understand and didn't originate from a central hub.
The Canadian Avalanche Centre was created in 2004, and with about $400,000 in annual funding, the focus was backcountry skiing. It worked, halving the number of skier deaths in avalanches.
But it failed for snowmobilers, independent-minded and hard-charging. The sport has become more popular and the machines far more powerful, and that mix has led to snowmobilers accounting for the majority of backcountry avalanche deaths in the past three winters.
The centre's annual budget for 2010-11 has climbed to about $900,000, which includes a boost of $150,000 announced this week by the B.C. government, doubling its contribution.
For skiers, the answer was better communication and an emphasis on safety training. Mr. Hodgson, a sledder based in Kamloops, B.C., said deaths in the past several winters have led his peers to seek out avalanche education. A recent seminar put on by a manufacturer was well-attended .
"I was impressed that the guys were there," said Mr. Hodgson. "It gives me the sense that the message is getting across, but it's going to take time."
B.C. snowmobile clubs, through trail-access fees, have also started to help fund their own safety. They aim to raise as much as $70,000 through the winter to hand over to the avalanche centre. It's cash that wasn't there before.
Avalanche information will be prominent in popular snowmobiling areas.
"They're going to be hit with a lot of info about avalanche safety and that's new," said Mr. Hodgson.
This year, the avalanche centre has again revamped its danger-rating system, creating clearer icons with snowmobilers in mind. Also, there is a new version of the Avaluator tool. Developed with $600,000 of federal government money and introduced four winters ago, the Avaluator guides recreational users with observations and advice to conduct themselves with "normal caution," "extra caution" or "not recommended."
About 5,000 copies have been sold each winter.
The new version incorporates more in-the-mountain terrain assessments.
"Snow is a difficult and challenging thing to understand," said Ian Tomm, executive director of the avalanche centre. "Terrain is simpler, you can see and avoid terrain features."
Additional money still is needed to improve the avalanche bulletins to cover narrower areas of the mountains, rather than broader regions as currently exists, he said.
In the past seven winters, the average number of backcountry skier deaths has been less than three in Canada. In the seven seasons prior to that, the period that ended with the disastrous winter of 2003, the average was almost six.
"There's just more signage and public awareness than there ever was," said Squamish-based skier Malcolm Sangster, producer of the 2008 film The Fine Line, about steep backcountry skiing and avalanche safety.
The ghosts of 2003 still ring for those who were there. The first severe slide that winter, which killed seven experienced skiers, occurred at veteran guide Ruedi Beglinger's Selkirk Mountain Experience operation.
A new documentary called A Life Ascending, which won a people's choice award at the recent Banff Mountain Film Festival and plays Saturday at the Whistler Film Festival, looks at Mr. Beglinger's life in the backcountry in the years since the slide. He has run his remote lodge for a quarter century.
"I don't think there's a single day I don't think about these seven people," Mr. Beglinger says in the film.
The lure of the mountains, their wild beauty, keeps people exploring the backcountry, even as the reality of risk always looms.
"It's my church, mountains, this is where my religion is. Mountains have energy, they're fully alive. It is passed to us as we travel through them," Mr. Beglinger says.
Still, , he adds: "Regardless of how much you know, you can't make the mountain safe. You can only make it safer."
David Ebner