Along the Icefields Parkway and the Maligne Lake Road, avalanche control work sometimes involves intentionally triggering an avalanche by using explosives. Parks Canada’s Visitor Safety team, lead by professional members of the Canadian Avalanche Association, continually monitors and assesses conditions and potential risk to travellers on these roads. Extensive training and experience helps the team decide when to deliberately trigger an avalanche. When necessary, this avalanche control work reduces the risk to motorists and also shortens the length of time the road may need to be closed, by influencing when an avalanche occurs and how large it is. By keeping the avalanches small, the road can be cleared much more quickly by our highway crews – no small task, as can be seen in the photo above.
Explosives for avalanche control are only used in situations where roads are threatened by avalanches, because in general, travelling motorists are not expected to have the knowledge and skills to assess avalanche conditions before driving. However, explosives are not used in the backcountry and so backcountry recreational users do need to be educated, informed, and make decisions accordingly.
While there is always some risk inherent in natural areas, Parks Canada provides daily avalanche bulletins to assist backcountry users in decision making. The bulletins contain timely and detailed information on current avalanche conditions and forecasts for three days forward, and are available on our website at www.pc.gc.ca/jasper (Avalanche Bulletins).
