The early afternoon light paints a perfect picture over the cornice on The Saddle ridge, connecting Marmot Peak and Marmot 2 peak. In the shadows of Marmot 2 peak, backlit snow blows over the cornice leaving the tempting look of untouched snow.

A skier’s paradise.

Below, at the top of the Knob chair, a patroller is stopping skiers and snowboarders from heading down the popular ungroomed run.

Seconds later, The Saddle explodes and thunder roars around the ski hill, likely all the way into the town site.

Chunks of snow slide far down the bowl, coming to a rest just before the out-of-bounds fence.

“That’s a permanently closed area. Below isn’t, and I’m sure you saw the fence line. Our work from the week before basically went right to that fence line.

There were probably about four sets of poacher tracks that got totally wiped out by that slide and buried in about two metres of debris,” says Jeff Andrews, director of patrol at Marmot Basin.

“I don’t think anybody would be out-running that.”

The explosive work done last week is a pro-active job the ski patrol does to prevent a future slide when the next storm comes though. It’s only the second time this year that Andrews has done explosive work on that part of The Saddle, but little bits of snow add growth to the cornice and consistent winds out of the southwest add to it, Andrews says, so knocking a bit down before the next storm will keep them a little less worried.

Marmot Basin has a stable snow pack this year, with the patrollers’ busiest time having been at the beginning of the season when they received over a metre of snow in November alone.

The amount of explosive work done throughout the year depends on the snow, and Andrews says some years they could be doing ridge walks, like on this day, every couple of weeks. This year, it is only their third.

Going out onto the cornice on belay (ropes), patrollers use an auger type of tool to drill into the cornice, putting in the charge – a combination of a TNT derivative and ANFO (Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil). On this day, Andrews uses 27 charges, all connected through a detonation cord to a main trunk line, which when lit, initiates all the charges at once.

“That’s what we find is most effective for shearing the cornices off. Instead of doing individual charges, get them all going off at one time and it does the best job at shearing the cornices off,” Andrews says.

The result is a wall of snow sliding down faster than a skier or snowboarder can move.

While this work is done out-of-bounds, the snow can fall in-bounds, which is why Andrews says it’s important to stay on the proper side of the fencing. The day before, while doing explosive work on Marmot 2, the debris, some the size of a small car, came all the way up to the edge of the out-of-bounds fence.

“We’ve probably removed about just around 100 passes this year (for ducking fences in search of fresh snow). Not too many season’s passes, mostly day passes. It’s pretty significant,” he says. “Probably because we haven’t had fresh snow in a while, people are looking for a fresh line and ducking the fences. But, as we proved with that slide, the fences are there for a reason.”

Marmot Basin has had four avalanche fatalities in its history, the last one being in 2002.