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.