Every winter you hear a few sad stories about snowmobile riders being swept away by avalanches out in BC.
And they are sad stories, no doubt about it.
Sometimes totally innocent recreational snowmobilers get caught up in an unexpected avalanche.
But more often than not, we're dealing with hard-core avalanche baiters. These are your adventurous types who will take up a wing suit after they get bored with their avalanche baiting adventures.
These are the welders and pipefitters and electricians who make $150,000 a year in Fort St. John or Fort Saskatchewan or Fort Mac, and they've got the credit rating to get the latest high-performance sleds from Polaris or Arctic Cat or Bombardier and then spend another thirty or forty thou to wring three or four hundred horses out of a thousand cc motor.
They go into the Kooteneys to provoke avalanches, not to avoid them.
As a matter of course you can usually outrun the avalanche you triggered, or at least use that power to stay on top of it.
But sometimes not.
That's when you see those sad headlines...
But you'll also see the bereft heading to the same slopes next weekend.
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