Avalanche Canada connecting backcountry users with better information on conditions

By Troy Bannerman - Lethbridge Herald Local Journalism Initiative Reporter on December 10, 2022.

Avalanche Canada has released an updated avalanche condition information system to release up to date and current conditions to help travellers plan their back country outings.

The new system includes smaller regions that can more accurately portray critical information. It also groups regions with similar conditions together to help travellers assess the information faster. The updated map also features a search bar to help find known locations, as well as introducing the Mountain Information Network to connect with travellers in the backcountry.

Grant Helgeson is the product manager at Avalanche Canada and he wanted a much more accurate system for helping people plan their back country escapes.

“We went from our sixteen pre-defined regions that we used to have, and now we actually have 92 regions. We expect that number to actually increase as we move into subsequent seasons. What we are actually doing is grouping [them by their avalanche conditions]. Sometimes Fernie is super different from the rest of the South Rockies, where they’ll get a hundred centimetres of snow in a 24 hour period. But as you move further east into the Rockies it tapers off dramatically. You might only get ten by the time you’re over into places like the Crowsnest Pass. Waterton gets a lot different snowfall than in Crowsnest. So, when it’s different we’re going to split it apart and we’re going to write [forecasts] that are specific to each one of those areas. But when they are the same we’ll group them together and write just one forecast and focus on places of greater need. So, really, the flexibility allows us to truly have conditions-based forecasting.”

The need for the new system was largely based on the inflexibility of the previous one, and finding ways to meet the needs of travellers and consumers.

“We used to give people quite a bit of information when they would visit the map,” said Helgeson. “But now, it’s actually much simpler. It’s much cleaner. Stylistically it’s great, but that actually comes from research that comes from the Big Data [Hub] at Simon Fraser University. And that research told us that we were actually trying to tell people too much. So, now it’s just that simple colour. And that colour provides a strong visual cue to know what the avalanche danger is. And then they can now decide if they want to delve deeper or maybe they want to go to an adjacent area that has a little bit less avalanche hazard, depending on what they are looking for the day they are heading out.”

The other major update is the search bar. Many have become comfortable with a similar device on Google or Bing where typing in a location centres it on the map.

“We actually built it ourselves,” said Helgeson. “And we used the Canadian geographic place names database that the Government of Canada provides, which is great. And then we’ve added in a bunch of specialty stuff as well, so some colloquial names of places. It’s pretty cool. There’s hundreds of thousands of places built into that search bar. So, you should try something obscure, but it also has the mountain parks, almost all the water features, also has backcountry lodges, managed snowmobile areas, it’s pretty comprehensive.”

The last feature, and one that Helgeson is very excited about, is the Mountain Information Network. This new addition to avalanche.ca brings them into the world of social media.

“The Mountain Information Network is a key part of that. All those blue dots that you see on the map are people’s MIN or Mountain Information Network postings, those are all public postings. And those really help us create better [forecasts] because we get on-the-ground conditions, especially in remote areas that our field teams might not be visiting. So, if people have conditions we really encourage them to put them there. Of course, if you put them on social media, great, but also just drop them into the MIN. It doesn’t have to be complicated, like you don’t need to be an expert to submit to it. Like a photo and a few lines about what you were doing that day and how it was helps us a lot.”

With this new system in place travellers can now plan their trips into the backcountry safely and with more accurate information. The new smaller, concise regions display localized conditions that can be grouped together for faster visual interpretation, with a search bar to help travellers find where they want to go.

The new Avalanche Canada system can be found at their website at https://avalanche.ca/map.