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September/October 2001 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Editor’s Notebook Feature: Backcountry beat The Inside Story Reverberations À la carte

Backcountry beat |  Names |  Stories |  Timeline |  High points  |  Avalanche hazards  |  Glaciers  |  Digital maps

An avalanche displays the wild force of Mother Nature, with thousands of tonnes of snow hurtling down a mountainside at up to 320 km/hr without any warning. But in mountainous areas deemed to be high-risk sites for avalanches, technicians from the Canadian Avalanche Centre purposely set off slides in a controlled manner to prevent unpredictable disasters, just as controlled burns decrease the probability of destructive forest fires. When an unstable snow pack is identified and the area cleared, avalanche technicians use explosives or Howitzer guns to set the giant snowballs in motion.

Rogers Pass in Glacier National Park has seen its fair share of avalanches. More than 200 deaths were caused by avalanches there between 1885 and 1911, including 62 people who were clearing an earlier slide from the railway track. This diagram shows that the paths of avalanches in this area over time converge on the highway.

Sources: National Atlas Information Service; British Columbia Ministry of Transportation and Highways; various avalanche control centres in British Columbia, Alberta and the Yukon.

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