Searchers work the bottom of Eagle Pass Peak after a fatal avalanche.
Faced with a rising tide of snowmobilers dying in avalanches, the Canadian Avalanche Centre says it needs to more than triple its budget to $3-million a year in order to run proper safety programming.
Back-country experts say more money could save lives in Canada's often-dangerous mountains.
But the avalanche centre, which provides critical safety information to a snowmobiling community whose sport is worth $6-billion a year in Canada, has entered a state of financial despair. It faces budget overruns and an uncertain future that could lead to layoffs.
"We want to empower safe back-country travel by snowmobilers. It can be done," said Ian Tomm, the centre's executive director. "But we're joking around the office right now that bake sales might be the next step in terms of raising funds."
Canada already devotes far less money to avalanche awareness and forecasting than other countries - Switzerland, for example, spends more than eight times as much - but even the centre's $800,000 a year is now under pressure.
It estimates that it will tumble $24,000 into the red this year, in part because of the cost of responding to the tragedy on Revelstoke's Boulder Mountain, where two snowmobilers died March 13.
But the centre also faces possible shortfalls in the year ahead. Parks Canada and the Meteorological Service of Canada together hand it $175,000 a year, but those funding agreements, which expire this year, have not yet been renewed. And the Alberta government, which provides $100,000 a year, has warned that it could cut funding by as much as 17 per cent.
"That's going to take the legs out of the CAC for a whole bunch of things," said Mr. Tomm, who plans to travel to Victoria in April to make the case that more funding is needed.
B.C. currently provides $150,000 a year. Another $100,000 comes from the Canadian Avalanche Foundation. And though the B.C. Coroner Service recommended that all four major snowmobile manufacturers boost their avalanche safety spending, Yamaha and Bombardier Recreational Products together give just $10,000 a year to the centre, which has no single entity it can turn to for help, even if some of its partners are open to it.
"We are prepared to look at the needs of the CAC and discuss it with our federal funding partners," said Bill Rodgers, communications director for Environment Minister Jim Prentice. "The provincial governments also need to be part of any funding equation."
Officials with the Alberta and B.C. governments declined to answer questions on a possible funding increase.
The centre also faces a problem of conflicting mandates: Snowmobiles are not allowed in parks, for example, making it unlikely Parks Canada would fund snowmobiler training.
Still, Mr. Tomm says it's clear more money is needed if it is to comply with recommendations from a recent B.C. Coroner's report, which pushed for better education and improved avalanche forecasting after 19 snowmobilers died in avalanches in 2008 and 2009.
"In the last couple of years, we've got a whole new user group that's turning into this high priority. But we really can't move on anything without it costing us money that we don't have or sacrificing core programs that are applicable to all user groups," Mr. Tomm said.
One of the most important needs is better avalanche forecasts. The centre now provides thrice-weekly forecasts for seven regions. But a single region - north Columbia - is larger than Switzerland, where forecasters provide daily reports for 11 areas.
Improving forecasts alone will cost several hundred thousand dollars, Mr. Tomm said. The centre also wants to rewrite the curriculum for its avalanche training courses, which snowmobilers have faulted as too expensive and time-consuming. Fewer than 10 per cent of those who take the courses today are snowmobilers, even though more than half of all avalanche deaths in the past decade have been snowmobilers - a percentage that climbed to 75 per cent in the past two years.
Snowmobilers themselves say more education is needed, but say inadequate funding has prevented some from accessing safety courses.
"Province-wide, it is insufficient funding," said Suzanne Clark, president of the B.C. Snowmobile Federation. "You can only educate if you have the funds."'
Part of the problem is too few staff. The avalanche centre employs the same number of forecasters as the state of Utah, which is a quarter the size of B.C. and dominated by desert. Canadian forecasters also base their work almost exclusively on reports from heli-ski operators and highway workers, who must pay $400 to $2,500 a year to access a system where they can input their observations. Elsewhere, forecasters make their own measurements, and non-professional snow observers are paid for their information.
"Our problem in Canada is that we're a huge massive geographic area and a small amount of population," said Evan Stevens, who runs B.C.'s Valhalla Mountain Touring. "How do we do this for such a huge area with so few people and way less funding than all these other places in the world? It's an uphill battle."