I was very interested in Pique’s recent articles on the 1972 avalanche and the subsequent starting of the Whistler Search and Rescue (“They just vanished,” Pique, April 7, and “Searching for a legacy,” Pique, April 14).
You may be interested to know a few pieces of information that add to these articles.
Before Whistler started, Franz Wilhelmsen and I, as head of the volunteer ski patrol, toured the mountain by helicopter to start deciding what would be required in the way of patrolling such a large area. As very few skiers were expected during the week at that time, with the bulk of skiers coming from Vancouver each weekend, it was decided that the volunteer ski patrol would handle the weekends and a couple of pro patrol would handle the weekdays. This is how it started in 1966.
Due to the inexperience of Vancouver skiers on a big mountain and the relatively poor safety equipment in those days (long thongs and crude safety bindings) there were a lot of accidents each day. The patrol was handling on average about 30 accidents per day on weekends.
Many skiers ventured out of bounds and ended up lost and exhausted. So started the first search and rescue. The patrol was called out many nights to help search for these lost skiers. Some, of course, were not lost, but were in the pub or had gone home without telling their friends. However, many were truly lost and some did not survive even though they’d been found that same night. Sometimes skiers were found within the ski area by the evening sweep. The volunteer patrol would go down each run, stopping periodically and yelling to hopefully get a response. The uncle of one our future patrollers was saved this way.
So started the genesis of search and rescue on Whistler Mountain.
Another major problem was communication between the patrol and the various lifts. To solve this, the volunteer patrol installed a telephone switchboard, donated by Telus, in the patrol room, and laid wires to each lift where we located a hand-crank telephone. This helped immensely in getting information of the whereabouts of injured skiers.
Then there was the avalanche problem. Nobody had experience in avalanche rescue or prediction. We therefore started right at the beginning in 1966 by purchasing avalanche probes and obtaining training in avalanche rescue and prediction. Two of our senior patrollers, Ian Mackenzie and Robin Manson, were invited by the US Forest Service to go down to Washington and take a two-day training course. This is not very long for such a complex subject. However, it was a start, and Ian and Robin came back and started training the whole patrol.
As time went on we received help from people like Hans Gmoser and Eric Lomas, who at that time was Whistler hill manager.
Eric came from Banff and was of great help. We also received guidance from [avalanche forecasters] based in Revelstoke. Other experienced individuals such as Ron Royston joined the patrol, and with many probe and search practices, we became the first trained avalanche search group on the mountain. This all occurred during the mid- to late ’60s.
It was while training with Eric Lomis to “test” the snow on “small” slopes by skiing down the slope and performing a hard stop to see if the snow would slide, that we set off an avalanche that completely covered me. However, being on a safety rope, the other patrollers at the top were able to stop me until the snow cleared. This left me hanging over a small cliff wondering what had happened. This certainly was an experience that heightened our awareness of the unpredictability of snow.
I hope you find this an interesting adjunct to the information Pique has already given on the avalanche dangers and deaths in the early days of Whistler Mountain. As you can see, the volunteer ski patrol played an integral part in the growth and knowledge of avalanche rescue.
(Read more in this week’s Museum Musings column.)
