SAFETY PROGRAM

Return to Safety

Meetings
All guides and drivers for Powder Cowboy Catskiing take part in daily morning and afternoon meetings. As a team of guides, the weather and snow stability is evaluated and a 'Run List" is created for the day. The final decision to ski a run is based on the team’s decision, and nothing is skied that the group is not comfortable with.

During the morning meeting we review reports from all of the other Cat-ski and Heliski operators in the province regarding their conditions and snow stability, enabling us to take a 'big picture' look at our conditions and evaluations, and compare them to our neighbors in the industry.

Explosives
As part of our safety program at Powder Cowboy Catskiing, we incorporate the use of explosives as part of our avalanche safety program. Through the use of explosives we are able to reduce the risk of large scale avalanches, by artificially triggering snow instabilities on a regular basis. This improves both our safety and skiing quality as it allows us to safely ski terrain that may not be appropriate to access without the use of explosives.

Snow Safety
At Powder Cowboy Catskiing we assign a team of two 'Snow Safety' guides each and every day of the season. As trained and certified guides, they are focused on providing the safest and most enjoyable ski product we can offer. They provide the guides of the groups the results of daily snow stability tests and observations along with where to find the best snow quality throughout the day. They also work directly with our Road Cat to build roads into new terrain and participate in active avalanche control work with explosives. This maximizes the amount of skiing terrain that we have to offer our guests, every day!

Guest Training and Back Country Safety Talk
Each Catskiing guest takes part in a safety briefing on the first morning of their visit. This includes the use of avalanche transceivers, skiing safely as a group and general backcountry safety topics. All guests, guides and drivers wear Ortovox transceivers while skiing.

Guest and Guide Packs/ Radios
Each Powder Cowboy guide carries a pack with avalanche safety and rescue equipment, and a first aid kit.

In every group two guests carry a 'guest pack' each with a probe, shovel and small first aid kit.

All Powder Cowboy guides and drivers, as well as the lodge and office staff have radios with them all day.

Weather
We formally monitor and record the local weather twice daily, and incorporate this information into our morning and afternoon guides' meeting and decision making. Check out our "Current Weather"page for the latest updates.

We continuously monitor changes to the weather, snow conditions and avalanche hazard throughout each ski day and adjust our safety program accordingly.

www.acmg.ca (Association of Canadian Mountain Guides)

www.avalanche.ca (Canadian Avalanche Association)