Monday, January 14, 2019

Too Damn Dumb to Live


In recent years, British Columbia has been averaging somewhere close to 10 fatalities a year from avalanches. Many of the victims, it seems, are Albertans.

The latest to die are a 51-year old Calgarian and the man's 24-year old son who remains missing.

There have been plenty of avalanche warnings of late and there were warnings of avalanche hazards in the Purcell Mountains where the party of nine Albertans took their snowmobiles.  Despite the warnings the group was competing in "high marking" on Saturday when the avalanche claimed its victims.

This is what high-marking can lead to:



What in hell causes these people to ignore avalanche warnings and do the very thing most likely to trigger an avalanche? It can be perilous at the best of times but why court death?

7 comments:

Jay Farquharson said...

High marking is the snowmobile equivalent of “hold my beer”.

Motorized off road vehicles have gone from a means of access, to a reason d’etre. In the past, you used them to get somewhere and then parked them and did something else. The whole reason one went “out there”. Now the whole reason to go “out there” is to ride around constantly on your motorized off road vehicle, in endless circles if needed.

That basically tells you all you need to know.

Anonymous said...

F u n n y!

The Mound of Sound said...


There's nothing funny about it, Anon. People who ignore every warning and tempt fate to the point of losing their lives are anything but funny.

I was brought up in a house on a lake. We did a lot on that lake in the winter - skating, hockey, fishing, even the odd iceboat - but we knew enough to stop when the cold passed.

There have been enough of these "high marking" deaths. Enough.

Jay Farquharson said...

They will continue Mound.

In high marking, the snowmobiler runs up the slope as high as they can with out bogging or flipping, turns across the top and rides the slope down.

So basically, they cut through the snowpack on one side, then the top, then the other side, severing the sheets integrity with the rest of the slope.

Basically a great way to create an avalance on even a “stable” slope.

As the situation in the US National Parks show, there’s no shortage of idiots, clowns and pigs out there.

the salamander said...

.. as my truly bright fiancee tends to say
when folks go against Darwin's Law
"Oh.. they're volunteers, not victims.."

Lorne said...

Hence the Darwin Awards.

The Mound of Sound said...


To me, it still beggars belief that people would act so foolishly as to place their lives in real danger for the sake of an afternoon of stunting.

In my earlier years I took plenty of risks but I always weighed those risks and did whatever was reasonably possible