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New website to share snowpack, weather information

Whistler-based wisegoat.ca draws on observations of professionals at remote lodges to complement CAC bulletins

Backcountry skiers planning trips into remote areas of B.C.’s Chilcotin, Selkirk, Kootenay and Rocky Mountain ranges will have a new website this winter from which to gather recent snowpack and weather information.

Launched by the owners of several backcountry lodges and affiliated companies, wisegoat.ca will provide raw data about recent snowfall amounts, wind activity, temperatures and snowpack observations, including recent avalanche activity.

The site was created by Avert Online Snow Science Systems, owned and operated by Whistler’s Daniel Curry, whose business provides data collection and business management systems specifically designed for the snow science industry. Although the creation and maintenance of the site is paid for by its participants, which include Whitecap Alpine’s McGillivray Pass Lodge in the South Chilcotin Mountains and Sorcerer and Battle Abbey Lodges in the Selkirks, the information will be available to the public free of charge.

“The service is a weather and snowpack conditions and observations sharing system,” explained Tannis Dakin, owner of Sorcerer Lodge. “It was specifically designed so the businesses involved can share information with each other, and with the public. We do believe this will be very useful information for those with the appropriate training and expertise who plan to be skiing in those local areas, and we want to share it.”

The information posted on the wisegoat site is designed to be used in conjunction with other publicly available snow and avalanche information, particularly that which is provided by the Canadian Avalanche Centre — whose website link is included on the wisegoat home page.

“The CAC public bulletin is an excellent tool,” Dakin said. “But it covers large chunks of the mountains. The difference is we can give information on local conditions.”

The wisegoat creators intend that the information they collect and post on their site be shared with the CAC, and have designed it in such a manner that it would be transferable.

The CAC public avalanche bulletins are compiled from information collected by numerous avalanche professionals in the field across the mountains of B.C. and western Alberta, including ski hill avalanche forecasters, helicopter skiing companies, cat skiing operators and government organizations such as Parks Canada and B.C. Highways. While that data is shared daily among subscribing professional organizations and backcountry operators, the raw information is not available to the public.

That information is collected and analyzed to create the public avalanche bulletins posted on the CAC website, while Parks Canada, Whistler-Blackcomb and North Shore avalanche professionals use the data they collect to create forecasts posted on their own respective websites, which are then linked to the CAC site.

The participants behind the wisegoat site had several reasons for launching it, Dakin said, including cost effectiveness, the ability to own and store their own information, the ability to share information between lodges via radios and repeaters — and thus allow lodges the choice to be free of the Internet — the ability to share their information with the public, and the ability to be of service to those without other options, such as the Alpine Club of Canada’s Fairy Meadow Hut, which has signed on as a participant.

The information posted on the wisegoat website will usually be collected and submitted by professional mountain guides working in any of three geographical areas — the Coast, Kootenay or Golden regions. Those guides working at ski touring lodges — where guests are flown in by helicopter but access the slopes by skis only for the duration of their stay — would submit data collected in the morning at the lodge, including current weather, temperature, wind activity and snowpack measurements, as well as afternoon field observations recorded during the course of their ski day, including observations of any avalanche activity.

In the case of those ski touring lodges that rent their facilities to groups that are self-guided, snowpack and weather information will be collected by custodians working at the lodges. The information will be coded according to the submitter’s level of professional accreditation. The previous 14 days’ data will be posted according to lodge and location, and will be available to the public. It will all be archived and available to wisegoat members in perpetuity, and will be saved in such a format the members can organize and view the info to fit their own professional needs.

Such information will likely be especially useful to those planning long ski traverses, Dakin added, since the currently available public bulletins cover large geographical areas, while snow conditions can vary widely from valley to valley, and even one mountain face to another.

For their part, public users will be required to acknowledge and agree to a release of liability, waiver of claims and assumption of risk agreement.

While the site is ready for viewing at www.wisegoat.ca the lodges won’t be uploading any information before they open, starting in mid December.