Carole Savage loves snowmobiling with a passion, and it's her experience and love for the sport that brought her to the Canadian Avalanche Centre (CAC) to fill the position of snowmobile program co-ordinator. In this role she promotes avalanche safety training, allowing her to empower people with lifesaving knowledge that makes their time in the mountains that much more fulfilling and enjoyable.
SnoRiders recently took some time with Savage to find out about this incredibly important program, her love for the sport and how avalanche safety training is so crucial to ensuring the joy of the ride.
How long have you been with the CAC?
I've been the snowmobile program co-ordinator with the CAC for three seasons now, and prior to that I was involved in a volunteer capacity.
Why did you choose to get involved?
I started riding in the mountains in the late 90s. I thought I was being safe out there until I got some avalanche training and realized I wasn't being safe at all. I thought I was, but I didn't know what I didn't know. This ignited a passion in me to get more training, and around that time I was elected president of the Golden Snowmobile Club (in Golden, B.C.). I thought, if I realize I don't know what I don't know and I have a small amount of training, how could I serve my club members better and lead by example? That was about the time, around 2003, I took my Level 1 Avalanche Industry Operations Course and started promoting avalanche safety and started collaborating with the CAC and my own club to get awareness out there.
That ignited a real passion in me for avalanche safety and snow science, and when a position came up with the CAC I had the skill sets they needed, contacts within the snowmobile industry, and the fact that I'm a snowmobiler myself—it rolled in quite nicely.
What are your duties as snowmobile program co-ordinator?
One of the big duties has been the delivery of the three-year Mountain Snowmobiling Avalanche Incident Prevention Project funded by the Search and Rescue New Initiatives Fund. Many of the products and services snowmobilers are enjoying came about because of that project. A few examples are the Go Farther campaign, the new Throttle Decisions video, and a lot of our attendance at shows and outreach events have been funded through this program. It has been very busy for me. I also do other things with the CAC, such as attend snowmobile outreach events, provide outreach talks and presentations, work with organized snowmobile groups, field outreach and avalanche technician fieldwork with the avalanche forecaster.
Can you tell me a little bit more about the objectives of the project?
The three main components of the three-year Mountain Snowmobiling Avalanche Incident Prevention Project are social science, avalanche education and outreach and communication. This project started three years ago, so we are now in its final year. With the social science component, we did some survey work with the snowmobiling community so we could better understand how we could tailor our program and services to their needs.
Secondly, with avalanche education and outreach, this is where the Throttle Decisions video came from. We also put articles in Snow Goer magazine and came up with an avalanche reality TV show, which is coming out through Snowmobiler TV. We are also providing a bursary program for snowmobilers to enter into the avalanche industry through partial or full coverage of their tuition for the Level 1 Avalanche Industry Operations Course that the Canadian Avalanche Association puts on. We also had a small group of snowmobilers go through Level 2 of the course, which was a big milestone.
Finally, with communication, we dealt with marketing and came up with strategies to reach the snowmobile community. Great things came out of that, such as the development of the Go Farther campaign. The idea is (that) you can go farther and experience more if you get avalanche safety training, because you have a better idea of your risk and can make a more informed decision about your riding plan for the day based on that risk. Communication (has) also involved attending snowmobile conferences, meeting with the snowmobiler stakeholder community and organizing snowmobile groups and working with them to find solutions to get avalanche safety out there to snowmobilers. Plus, there's a lot going on behind the scenes.
What do you love most about your job on a daily basis?
I love that I get to empower people to learn more about avalanche safety so they can go out and enjoy the mountains in a safe manner. That's my ultimate goal. I love the fact that I can reach people and I can talk to them and show them the tools and where to go for information so they can be safe out there and enjoy doing what they love in the mountains.
