Post-Avalanche

There are those who took place in the Big Iron Shootout at Revelstoke that ended in several hundred onlookers, the snowmobile participants and their vehicles being inundated by a veritable mountain of snow and ice, who admitted with the candour of insouciance that they were well aware of the high risk involved in their adventure.

The lovely, sunny weather, the fresh, deep snow and the thrill of the adrenaline rush captivated them and they were willing to take the risk.

"It was like a bomb went off, a war zone", was the description given by a witness, while another said "the whole ridge let go". "The avalanche scrambled the machines and wrapped them around each other. You could see people's arms, legs and heads sticking out of the snow. They were yelling for help and trying to get out. There were a lot of broken legs, arms and wrists."

Yes, and several deaths, and quite a few people hospitalized, a number in serious condition. But this was an event, despite the potential for nature's backlash, that no one wanted to miss. "They seen the avalanche coming down, got on their snowmobiles and rode out." Stolidly stalwart snowmobilers, worshipping the opportunity to taunt nature.

An extreme 'sport' event, to race snowmobiles directly up the side of a mountain, pulling off jumps and stunts, and generally having a whale of a time, demonstrating skill(?) and ferocious ambition to outdo one another. "Everybody just disappeared - tossed, thrown, taken with the snow. The amount of snow that came down was unbelievable."

The avalanche occurrence was directly associated with the racing snowmobilers climbing the mountain with their souped-up, powerful machines, unleashing the unstable mass of snow and icy crust. They practised what they called "extreme high marking" and the mountain answered with its "extreme high fall-out".