Abstract

Snowshoeing and winter hiking has grown significantly in the last decade. To provide this community with better avalanche safety messages, it is critical to understand their avalanche safety practices. We conducted intercept interviews with snowshoers and winter hikers at the main backcountry trailhead in Mount Seymour Provincial Park outside of Vancouver, B.C, Canada. Participants shared their typical trip destinations, which we used to determine their general exposure to avalanche terrain based on the Avalanche Terrain Exposure Scale (ATES). We found that all participants were exposed to some avalanche terrain, despite their general lack of avalanche awareness, formal training, or use of avalanche information like the public avalanche forecast. Most participants also believed that they did not expose themselves to avalanche terrain, highlighting that initiatives raising awareness of what constitutes avalanche terrain, how to recognize it and when it is safe to travel into, are key starting points for this community.

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