BCA Education Program Reviews & Articles

Transworld Business
October 2006

Banff, Canada’s Mt. Norquay Patrol Director John Thornton presiding over the BCA/Norquay Beacon Cup during Canadian Avalanche Awareness Days.

Teaching Out-of-Bounds

With access gates tempting visitors, resorts play an increasing role in backcountry education.

Most of the 130 U.S. ski areas that utilize Forest Service land offer backcountry access gates. Some have an open-boundary policy, allowing guests to cross into out-of-bounds terrain, while others’ boundaries are closed or vary according to conditions. Anecdotal evidence indicates that more people are accessing the backcountry, many via access gates. In turn, resorts have been increasing measures to educate customers about backcountry safety.

In the last few seasons, avalanche beacon practice areas have been springing up at resorts throughout the West. The most widespread are Beacon Basin Transceiver Training Parks, created by transceiver, probe, and shovel maker Backcountry Access. Thirty resorts in eight states now offer the free parks, which provide a venue for guests to practice skills by bringing their own transceiver to search for pre-buried beacons attached by wires to a control panel. “There’s no digging required, so this method is more fun and productive,” says BCA VP Bruce Edgerly.

The company has even taken it a step further by building beacon-controlled access gates for select ski areas. The gates operate using detector-controlled hinges that only open when a transceiver signal has been detected. Canada’s Sunshine Village utilized the devices last season, and other resorts including the backcountry-dominated Silverton Mountain, Colorado are looking into them for 2006/07.

Aside from BCA’s programs, an increasing number of resorts have hosted backcountry education events during the last few winters. Perhaps the most progressive resort program is Mt. Baker, Washington’s Mountain Education Center, which educates 300 people a year through one-day introductory courses and three-day intensives. The basic courses cost 25 dollars per participant and focus on transceiver use and general backcountry info, while the 150-dollar intensives incorporate analyzing snowpack, reading terrain, digging pits, and even simulate a full-on burial.

Other programs target youth. The Alpine Safety Awareness Program (ASAP) a non-profit out of Bellingham, Washington, has educated 10,000 students—mostly middle school and high school kids—about backcountry safety and offers optional on-hill training at ski resorts. A fifteen-minute video touting avalanche prevention called Know Before You Go, created by Craig Gordon of the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center in 2005, targets twelve to 25 year olds and has reached 12,000 people. More than twenty U.S. ski areas are currently using it to help train visitors.

Some resorts are pairing up with RECCO, the Swedish company that manufactures searchable reflectors. It reports that more than 120 U.S. ski areas and 100 outdoor brands are now using the avalanche-ready system. The brand is working to extend that outreach this season through retailers, where RECCO distributed more than 250,000 copies of its White Book, which outlines basic components of backcountry know-how. The book will be inserted into various snowboard publications this winter.

Even if brands like RECCO are reaching out to the public, resorts will still represent much of the frontline for backcountry safety and rescue training and techniques. While most focus will remain on education programs and public awareness, some states are choosing to up the rescue potential of their areas in case avalanche tragedy should strike. Utah’s Wasatch Backcountry Rescue, a volunteer organization whose membership includes eight Utah resorts, is utilizing state-of-the-art long-range helicopter-mounted receivers to enhance its rescue techniques. In a state plagued by snow slides, the use of transceivers that cover a broader search area can help once the preventative training and education has failed.

- April Darrow