FIELD OF DREAMS: INSIDE AVALANCHE CANADA’S FIELD TEAMS
Words and photos by Avalanche Canada
It’s a wintery midweek morning in the mountains and the glimmer of dawn is just starting to bathe the peaks in pale light. The staging areas are quiet, apart from the few early-birds preparing for their day. At the trailhead, a group of mountain professionals are getting ready to start their workday. They’ve assessed the weather and conditions, made a plan, prepped their packs, run through their checklists, and now they’re warming their sleds ready to go.
That team is one of six Avalanche Canada field teams that operate across Canada. From Vancouver Island to Newfoundland, we work in data sparse areas to gather essential information for the Avalanche Canada forecasting program, but data collection is only part of what we do.
Field teams are our forecasting team’s go-to for conditions in our regions. From investigating potential issues lurking under the snow surface, to helping identify future areas of concern, we provide a vital source of information. We collect this information in many different ways, but often you’ll see us scouting out old avalanches, making weather observations, digging holes to look at buried layers, and testing slopes to find out how stable the snow is. Without the information we are able to collect, our avalanche forecasts would be far less accurate.
However, while it’s a field teams’ role to keep their fingers on the pulse of the snowpack in their regions, keeping up with the local community is another essential part of what we do. If you ride in an area we cover, you might well see us gearing up and exploring the local terrain–and if you do, be sure to say hello. Chatting to people on the trails is quite literally part of the field team members’ role and it’s one we really enjoy. Feel free to ask questions about the conditions, chat about avalanche safety in general, or ask where you can find more information on playing safe in the mountains. We’re always keen to connect.
You might also spot a member of your local field team at a local outreach event or hanging around at events at your local sled club. This is another important part of our job. Your community is our community and we love taking part in events that help us give back. We live, work, and play in the same areas as our field teams cover and being involved in the local scene is important to us.
Another big part of what the field teams do is communication. After every day in the field, each team creates a social media post full of information about what we’ve seen in the day. It might include advice on choosing terrain, information about what the weather might do to the snowpack, handy tips to make your day in the mountains easier, or any number of other helpful things we think of! Following your local field team is an easy way to get little snippets of information delivered directly into your feed (and we like to think we’re fairly entertaining white we do it).
Give your local field team a follow and see what we get up to throughout the winter. Whether you ride every chance you get or every once in a while, keeping up with your local field team is one more tool to keep you on top of what’s happening where you ride.
