Two backcountry skiers died Saturday in an avalanche about 40 kilometers south of Lake Tatla, BC, in the province’s West Chilcotin region.
According to Avalanche Canada, the two snowmobiled to the east slope of Potato Peak and were skiing when they were completely buried by the Size 2 avalanche.
The skiers were reported overdue and a search party found and borrowed their bodies. Her identity has not been made public.
Avalanche Canada chief forecaster Simon Horton said the deadly avalanche occurred outside of Avalanche Canada’s forecast area.
“This incident happened in a very remote and harsh area where we don’t get any information about the snow or recent avalanche activity, which is really important information to make a reliable avalanche forecast,” he said.
Avalanches are rated on a magnitude scale of 1 to 5. According to Horton, anything over a size 2 is large enough to bury, injure, or kill a person.
“So there were a couple of factors that we saw from the avalanche [on Potato Peak]”, he said. “One is that there were very weak strata, and that’s why we call it a ‘deep, sustained plate avalanche.’ And the second factor was that it was very wind influenced and windblown snow on the weak snow would have triggered an avalanche.”
6th and 7th avalanche deaths in 2023
The latest fatalities bring the total number of BC avalanche deaths in 2023 to seven, including two off-duty officers from the Nelson Police Department who were on a ski trip near Kaslo and two Pennsylvania brothers on a guided heli-skiing tour in BC’s interior .
According to Horton, an average of 10 people die in avalanches in Canada every calendar year.
He says people who are recovering in the backcountry should do avalanche training. He also recommends using the Avalanche Canada Dangerator to assess safety conditions outside of the predicted areas.
“It uses a simple checklist with some weather and snow observations, and you can use that to create an estimate of the hazard rating in your area,” he said.
Forecasters have compared this season’s snowpack to conditions observed two decades ago in one of the province’s worst years for avalanche fatalities.
“We have these persistent plate-like problems in many of our forecast regions — most of the Interior Ranges and parts of the Coast Ranges as well,” Horton said. “When you see these kinds of problems in the forecast, it generally means more difficult conditions and that you should be more careful with the terrain you’re running.”
