Each year, Parks Canada and Marmot Basin partner to put on an avalanche training scenario for ski patrollers, resource conservation officers and other people looking to hone their rescue skills.

This year’s exercise took place on Jan. 30 just above the top station of the Canadian Rockies Express lift, where more than a dozen people practised their searching, probing and digging in a “mass burial” scenario.

A series of “victims” were buried beneath the snow ahead of time, some of them wearing avalanche beacons, others not. Then the participants – both human and canine – were let loose onto the terrain to rescue as many as they could.

The team pulled out the beacon-equipped “victims” first using avalanche transceivers and then went to work locating the others through slower methods, including using the dogs to sniff out the scent of clothing and forming probe lines, in which teams of five or six people stand side-by-side and methodically poke through the snow, advancing in unison, until one of them strikes an object below.

Upon a probe strike, the teams would gather and form into a V-shape to dig and move snow in the most efficient manner.

Having people both at the ski resort and elsewhere in the park trained in advanced avalanche rescue techniques is important in case of a major event, said Garth Lemke, a public safety specialist with Jasper National Park.

“We like to do a big scenario like that once a year, because if something like that – at that level – were to occur, we’d all be responding,” he said.