You are not alone
My name is Karl Klassen. I am the Public Avalanche Bulletins Manager for the Canadian Avalanche Centre in Revelstoke. I have 32 seasons experience as an avalanche professional and mountain guide. I have played in and made a living in most aspects of avalanche work in many mountain ranges around the world. I am married with an almost-nine year old son. Our family regularly goes into the mountains, including the backcountry, both in winter and in summer.
On behalf of the CAC and all its staff as well as from my family and I, I extend sincere condolences and sympathies to the families and friends of victims of the recent fatal avalanches. In addition we send our hopes for a speedy and full recovery to those who were injured.
I am not a sledder. But I feel have a lot in common with your world. My love for adventure and excitement, my attraction to riding in great snow, and my appreciation for the beauty and majesty of the mountain environment are exactly the same as what many of you have recently expressed in the media, on forums like this, and through personal communications. Like many of you, I also feel that risk is an essential component of life and that eliminating all risk would kill an essential part of my being. And like you, I have had friends, colleagues, and co-workers perish in avalanches.
I can personally relate to the grief many of you are feeling as a result of having friends or family lose their lives or suffer the long term debilitating effects of serious injuries. I’m very familiar with the feelings of anger and resentment many of you feel due to the negative public and media sentiments aimed at the snowmobiling community as a whole. I have been directly or indirectly involved in numerous avalanche and other accidents in the last 30 years and I can say from personal experience that, while it may feel you are being singled out, you are not alone in any of this.
In addition, I know all about how it feels to see the call for regulation of my sport and my profession. It doesn’t matter if it’s a mountaineer (like Philip Abbot who was killed on Mount Lefroy in 1896) or skiers (like the 14 -- 7 of them children -- who perished in back to back accidents in the early winter of 2003) or sledders (like last year and this year). The general public and the media have a hard time understanding, don’t (or can’t) get the whole story, and seldom seem to get the story quite right. In each of the examples I mention above, there have been calls to ban or regulate certain mountain activities and in fact, past accidents in the skiing community have resulted in federal, provincial, and internal regulation that affect me personally and my community as a whole.
You are not alone in any of this.
Rest assured, we at the CAC know full well the majority of snowmobilers make reasonable decisions about avalanche risk. I know that the accidents in the last couple of weeks are not indicative of sledders’ general approach. I know there have been thousands of people sledding all over the province during the past few weeks who have had a wonderful time with their friends and families while making informed decisions about the risks involved and maintaining safety margins that keep risk within their personal comfort level.
I do not for one minute believe that any of the people who were killed or injured in recent accidents deliberately put themselves in a position where they felt there was a risk of serious injury or death. I do not believe that any parent would knowingly or deliberately put their child in such a position, nor do I believe that anyone, even the most daring risk-taker would put themselves in a position where they knew the outcome would be their own death or the death of someone else.
I have debated for a long while whether I should post this or not because I'm an outsider. But in the end, I think I have something to offer if you folks are interested and willing to hear a perspective from another segment of the backcountry community that lives, works, and plays in the mountains.
I have more to say, about some posts in this thread and others as well as about more general thoughts expressed by various people, which run counter to my personal experience and which I think need to be discussed but I will not go any farther now. I'll wait to see what kind of response this post generates and if you are interested and willing to hear more about my personal experience with avalanches and avalanche terrain both in general and in response to some of the specific comments I've been hearing lately, let me know and I'll post more if you think it is appropriate.
I'll check back here now and then or you can send me a pm or email:
kklassen@avalanche.ca to tell me what you think.
Be safe.
At the end of the day, we all find our joy and pleasure in life doing different things. Those of us who find that joy in the backcountry are more alike than disalike. IMO. 
