# Avalanche kills one, injures 12 on B.C. mountain



## Geoff Empey (Jan 8, 2008)

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100313/national/avalanche_dead

_REVELSTOKE, B.C. - A large-scale search and rescue operation was underway in southwestern B.C. Saturday night after an avalanche killed at least one person and injured 12. __RCMP said they didn't know how many more people may be hurt or missing. 
_
_Some 200 people were attending the annual Big Iron Shootout on Boulder Mountain, near Revelstoke, when the slide occurred Saturday afternoon."The area has been shut down to keep people out," said Cpl. Dan Moskaluk. "They're going to continue on here with trying to remove people off the mountain in the area and tomorrow reassess where we're at."Moskaluk said police don't yet have details about the person who was killed or the extent of people's injuries. _

_Search and rescue teams, including helicopters and avalanche rescue dogs were working to recover those caught in the slide."You've got a variety of emergency assets, everything ranging from your Revelstoke search and rescue to provincial emergency programs," Moskaluk said. _
_"There's air assets in the form of helicopters ... RCMP police dogs, services dogs, avalanche trained dogs, a variety of machines and people, essentially it's a large scale rescue that's being coordinated." _


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## Geoff Empey (Jan 8, 2008)

RCMP now say two dead, many accounted for in BC slide but search continues  _http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100314/national/avalanche_dead_ 
<!-- phugc --> _By Shannon Montgomery, The Canadian Press_
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_ REVELSTOKE, B.C. - The scope of the tragedy was still unfolding Sunday after a massive avalanche came down on a group of snowmobilers in the Monashee Mountains, apparently triggered by three daredevil sledders who unleashed a deadly wall of snow on up to 200 people below. _
_ Some of the people at risk, possibly including children, had stopped from what they thought was a safe distance and were watching what one witness called "those crazy guys" race their snowmobiles up the side of the mountain when the torrent of snow came down. _

_ RCMP said Sunday that two men have been confirmed dead but it remains unknown how many others are still unaccounted for after the slide on Boulder Mountain on Saturday afternoon. _
_ Police knocked on hotel doors all night to try and determine how many people who came to town for the informal Big Iron Shoot-Out might still be on the mountain, buried under the snow. _
_ The annual Big Iron Shoot-Out - Big Iron sometimes refers to a snowmobile - is a gathering not sanctioned by any snowmobile club and involves different kinds of skills contests. High-marking isn't uncommon. _
_
He said 30 people were injured, one person critically. Nineteen of the injured have been released from hospital and four transferred to hospitals in Calgary, Kelowna, Kamloops and Vernon, B.C., for treatment of more serious injuries. __Avalanche technicians flew over the area to test for stability Sunday morning and about 40 to 50 searchers will be on the mountain with five avalanche-trained search dogs. _
_ Moskaluk said some hope remains that someone caught up in the slide could still be alive, but he indicated it might not be likely. __"I don't think we ever want to give up hope. Certainly there is faint hope at this time, however, being realistic we are referring to this as a recover/rescue situation." _

_ The town, nestled in the Columbia mountain range on the western edge of the majestic Rocky Mountains, has seen its share of backcountry tragedy but the potential death toll of this latest slide has shaken Revelstoke and the entire backcountry community. __Two men who witnessed the avalanche said it hit so many people in part because a crowd stopped to watch a group high-marking up the mountain. High-marking is a contest among snowmobilers to see who can climb the highest on a mountain, leaving the highest mark. __Steve Langevin, 38, said he thought the crowd was safe from the people he called "those crazy guys" because they were what seemed like kilometres away, but the wave of snow was so massive it easily reached them. __His friend, Pierre Beaudoin, 48, said the accident could have been prevented if people hadn't been high-marking. __"We were watching, a whole bunch of people were parking there and then they were watching the high-mark. That's why everybody was stopped there." _
_ He said it was irresponsible for them to high-mark in those conditions, especially with a number of them going up at the same time. __"The minute one makes it to the top, oh, the next guy, I could do it, and then it becomes stupid. And it was stupid, they were starting to come from the side, one's coming down and one's going up." __"Then everything started going crazy." __The experienced backcountry user said he used his equipment to lead survivors with shovels to places in the snow where avalanche beacon signals - a piece of equipment that gives off an electronic signal from under the snow - indicated people might be buried. __Other survivors said the area looked like a "war zone" after the avalanche struck. __Kathy Berlingette, owner of the Smokey Bear Campground Resort in the area, said she had five guests who came to town for the event, an unsanctioned but increasingly popular informal gathering of those who enjoy snowmobiling in the deep snow of the B.C. backcountry. __All five of her guests survived the avalanche that struck around 3:30 p.m. in an area called the Turbo Bowl, a fairly flat expanse between two mountains, at the foot of Boulder. __"They're all very shook up," Berlingette said in a telephone interview. "There were parents that took children up there to watch this event." __A spokeswoman for the Interior Health region said the area hospital called in all available staff and Revelstoke Mayor David Raven said more than 20 people were treated for injuries on Saturday after being airlifted off the mountain. Interior Health said four people were transferred to larger hospitals in the region for treatment of more serious injuries. _

_ The Canadian Avalanche Centre had a warning out for the area this weekend that the risk of avalanche was "considerable." __"Search and Rescue and the RCMP were out on site. They've got most of the people off that they know of now. The hospital's been very, very busy tonight," Raven said in a telephone interview Saturday. __He said authorities have "absolutely no idea" how many people may yet be unaccounted for. Estimates by those who were at the scene range from 50 to 150. __"It's an unsanctioned, unorganized event.... The RCMP are trying now to determine who was up there and how many and figure out who may be missing," Raven said. __Adam Burke, 20, a member of the Revelstoke Snowmobile Club, said his mother and many of his friends were up there at the time, but his mother was OK. __Burke said he chose not to go because of the dangerous conditions in the mountains this weekend. __"Today it was high risk and just the other day it was extreme," he told The Canadian Press in a telephone interview. __"I told everyone to shut the mountain down. ... Just how I've been riding and I've noticed a lot of slab avalanches and I've caused a lot of little stuff over the season and it's just progressively gotten worse. __"I told my mom to shut it down and don't have anything to do with this event because it's going to kick you in the ass." __Burke said his friend's father was one of the people unaccounted for in the slide near Revelstoke, located approximately 300 kilometres west of Calgary and about 400 kilometres northeast of Vancouver. __There have been a few avalanche fatalities in the B.C. backcountry already this season but nothing compared to last winter, when there were two dozen deaths, including one slide that claimed the lives of eight snowmobilers near Fernie, B.C., in December 2008. There were 13 avalanche deaths the previous winter. 
_
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/nphotos/sl...prepare-head-area-large-avalanche-struck.html

The RCMP is giving updates here:
http://bc.rcmp.ca/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=50&languageId=1&contentId=13832
http://bc.rcmp.ca/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=50&languageId=1&contentId=13833


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