Heh. We've had a bunch of above-freezing as well. And when it is "cold", it's a few degrees below freezing. Pfft. Not cold, and very odd for here. The warmth actually has made the avalanche risk worse. When it warms up an ice crust forms on top of the snow, and then more snow falls and doesn't bond to the lower level because of the ice. So the whole thing is like a precariously balanced layer cake -- one trip, and the whole thing goes sliding. But people *will* ignore the risk and go into the backcountry where there's no avalanche prevention work, and so we've had more fatalities this year already than in a whole regular winter. I admit I've been tempted to go out myself, because the weather is so very beautiful, but I'd stick to safe areas, yes?
I'm sorry that you get stuck dealing with people with avalanche problems - people are foolish at times, and in the wilderness that has much more drastic consequences. A lot of people around here are also going out, including myself, but Chicago is much more benign in good weather, and after all, Illinois is so flat we could probably see halfway to Churchill if the Earth wasn't curved.
Up until last week people here were still mowing their lawns. Hopefully today's snowfall will relieve them of that duty, but it's January and the grass is still semi-green. That's pretty disturbing to be honest.
(Obviously Canada needs to invest money in cargo planes that can fly over avalanche country and let tourists throw lit sticks of dynamite onto the terrain below. I bet you could make ridiculous amounts of money - at the cost of leveling a great deal of Canada's backcountry and anyone who happened to be standing on it. And you would have to worry about pilots getting lost...).
Oh, I'm not directly professionally involved with the avalanche searches (unless I get called out for volunteer S&R). It's just a stupid waste of life, yes? And also of taxpayer's resources. They've finally started charging the extreme sport yahoos for when they need emergency extraction, and it's about bloody time. There's a difference between "avoidable" and "idiotic risk", and when people do the latter I don't have much sympathy if things go sideways.
Your scheme for fixing things is alas impractical, no matter how appealing. The plane routes tend to go over passes so far as I know (but I could be wrong), so those are already being managed, and they'd mostly just blow up people and put inconvenient holes in the roads.
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Up until last week people here were still mowing their lawns. Hopefully today's snowfall will relieve them of that duty, but it's January and the grass is still semi-green. That's pretty disturbing to be honest.
(Obviously Canada needs to invest money in cargo planes that can fly over avalanche country and let tourists throw lit sticks of dynamite onto the terrain below. I bet you could make ridiculous amounts of money - at the cost of leveling a great deal of Canada's backcountry and anyone who happened to be standing on it. And you would have to worry about pilots getting lost...).
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Your scheme for fixing things is alas impractical, no matter how appealing. The plane routes tend to go over passes so far as I know (but I could be wrong), so those are already being managed, and they'd mostly just blow up people and put inconvenient holes in the roads.