'The way of the future': Goodbye guns, hello avalanche-exploding drones at Whistler

Drone Amplified, and Alpine Solutions Avalanche Services recently conducted a test of a drone-based avalanche mitigation system — MONTIS — which drops explosives onto mountain slopes with pinpoint accuracy. The test, at Whistler, is believed to be the first of its kind at a Canadian resort. Photo by Drone Amplified photo /PNG

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It started with a menacing “whoosh” and a “Watch it!” before a slab of mountainside broke loose under the skis of Montgomery (Monty) Atwater, swallowing him in its crushing embrace.

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Atwater was in Alta, Utah, purposefully triggering avalanches by cutting across the slopes on skis to make the run safe for waiting skiers.

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“The whole mountain was coming at me, or at a rough estimate, a thousand tons of it,” he wrote in his book, Avalanche Hunters.

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He tumbled down the mountain, being crushed and suffocated. Only luck caused him to be spat out from under the snow.

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At that point, in the early 1950s, the Second World War veteran — a winter warfare instructor who fought for the U.S. in northern Europe — figured there had to be a better way to do avalanche control. So he came up with the most American of answers: He’d just blow it up.

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Atwater convinced the U.S. army to provide him with two out-of-date French 75-millimetre howitzers, and started blasting avalanche-prone runs at Alta ski resort.

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He is considered the grandfather of the dominant method for clearing mountains for the past 80 years. Around the world, howitzers and recoilless rifles — a weapon similar to a bazooka — are used to purposefully trigger avalanches.

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Anton Horvath, avalanche forecaster for Whistler Mountain prepares a shot to trigger a controlled avalanche in 2004. Photo by Bonny Makarewicz /PROVINCE

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But technology has caught up with the technique.

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In late March on Whistler Peak, after the final skier had cleared the mountain on the last day of the season, an Alta X drone lifted off with explosives on board, successfully dropping a test charge designed to trigger an avalanche. It was a first for any Canadian ski resort.

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U.S. company Drone Amplified designed the drone’s MONTIS system, with Squamish-based Alpine Solutions Avalanche Services conducting the test. It came after a long wait for Transport Canada to grant final approval.

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“The use of the howitzers is actually kind of one of the reasons that we got into this, and why we were approached to do this,” said Dan Justa, vice-president at Drone Amplified.

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A drone drops a charge on the side of a mountain. Photo by Drone Amplified /PNG

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“The howitzers in the U.S. are going away. They’re older … the guns that they have, at least up in Alaska, are like Korean War-era guns. And they’re running out of ammunition that was produced for it. When it’s gone, it’s gone. And they’re not really able to get new updated systems — (those are) actively used, and the military in the U.S. doesn’t like civilian agencies having massive howitzers.

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“That became a big thing in the industry. ‘What are they going to do when the guns go away?'”

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There are other methods of deliberately triggering an avalanche. Ski patrollers who ascend mountains to throw, by hand, charges with 90-second fuses onto the target slopes. Helicopters can deliver them, but it’s costly and dangerous, hovering metres from the slopes as the explosions go off.

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Such methods can also risk triggering a slide prematurely, sending the active explosive on an uncontrolled trip down the side of the mountain, where it could detonate in unwanted areas.

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The MONTIS system uses an electronic trigger to detonate in an airburst just above the surface, which has a more effective concussive force and allows for more precision targeting.