After trudging through waist-deep snow for the better part of an hour on Monday, snapping hundreds of photos of avalanche training exercises at Marmot Basin, I was just about to head back down the mountain when I decided to grab one last shot.

It’s the picture you see to the right.

While not my favourite of the bunch, technically speaking, this image stood out in my mind because it offered a sudden and stark reminder that, despite the generally jovial nature of the exercise, this was a serious affair. It’s a striking juxtaposition to look at the smiling face of the ski patroller and then the human-shaped “victim” he’s dragging from the snow.

I had been smiling too, as I scurried around the teams of rescuers with my cameras as they went through their scenario. Everyone was properly good natured during the exercise, while still taking the task at hand seriously. But we couldn’t help but laugh at one point, when, after getting a probe strike and digging frantically for what they thought was one of the buried “victims” in the scenario, Jennifer Wasylyk of Parks Canada emerged with an old, metal “Avalanche Danger” sign that must have fallen over and been buried months ago. You can see her posing with the “rescued” sign on page 4.

Funny at the time, sure, but a false-positive strike and wasted effort like this would not be so amusing when the rescue effort was for real. Digging for a buried friend and coming up with an old piece of debris instead would be devastating.

Time, of course, is of the essence when attempting an avalanche rescue. Victims have precious few minutes of breathable air and rescuers have to keep their wits about them, working quickly but not frantically to locate and then extricate the buried, while also ensuring they aren’t putting themselves in the path of another potential slide.

I’ve never been in such a scenario, for real, but I have run through exercises, too, and I can tell you things get hairy pretty quick when you’re struggling to locate a “victim” within the first few minutes. It’s easy to panic and takes training to keep calm and carry on with the proper search techniques while under pressure. I can only imagine how much harder that is when it’s your friend or your father or your wife under the snow.

And so it’s encouraging to know that Marmot Basin and Parks Canada hold these types of exercises regularly, ensuring there is a complement of trained rescuers both at the resort and elsewhere in the park, in case of a major incident in which multiple people are buried.

“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,” said Garth Lemke, a public safety specialist with Jasper National Park.

Still, it’s hard to imagine ski patrollers and resource conservation officers all responding quickly enough to rescue everyone, should there be a major burial incident. Indeed, even in the practice scenario, many of the “victims” didn’t make it. These were primarily the ones who weren’t wearing avalanche transceivers, forcing rescuers to use the slower Recco system (passive reflectors embedded in outdoor clothing), scent-sniffing dogs, or probe lines.

And that’s the other realization I came away from the exercise with – just how important it is to wear a transceiver. Not only is it your best chance of self-rescue within your own group, it makes the job a lot easier for the professionals when they get called in.

It’s almost universal, in my recent experience, for skiers and snowboarders who regularly venture out into the backcountry to always wear beacons and carry their own probes and shovels. But for those more casual skiers and riders who are thinking of ducking into avalanche terrain near a resort without this essential gear, just take one more look at the photo above.

The patroller who drags you out won’t be smiling. 

DISCLAIMER: The Last Word is an opinion column, it is meant to provoke thought and debate. As such, any opinions written here are the writer’s own and do not reflect the viewpoint of any other Fitzhugh staff member or the directors of the Jasper Media Group Inc.