The Canadian Press
McBRIDE, B.C.—The day after a colossal avalanche killed five snowmobilers in eastern B.C., Thea Pelletier climbed aboard her machine and returned to the backcountry wilderness.
She unfastened a yellow plastic lily from her backpack and planted the flower in pristine snow to pay her respects.
“I had a moment. It was intense. It was bigger than thou,” Pelletier said.
“You feel the insignificance of what you are when you’re up against mountains like this,” she added.
“I can’t imagine someone calling my mom to say, ‘Your daughter is not coming home.’”
The B.C. Coroners Service revealed over the weekend the identities of the five Alberta men who died Friday during a recreational outing on Mount Renshaw, near the small community of McBride, B.C.
They were identified as Vincent Loewen, 52, of Vegreville, Tony Greenwood, 41, of Grand Prairie County, Ricky Robinson, 55, of Spruce Grove, Todd Chisholm, 47, of St. Albert, and John Garley, 49, of Stony Plain.
The Coroner’s office issued a news release that it concluded its investigation of the avalanche area as it works to determine the cause of the slide.
RCMP said the snowmobilers were in four separate groups that had converged just before the slide came roaring down.
As the sun set Saturday evening, four trucks with Alberta licence plates and snowmobile trailers attached were left empty in the darkness at the foot of the Rocky Mountain range.
Inside one was a pack of cigarettes and ring of faux Hawaiian flowers hanging from the rear-view mirror.
There were Tim Hortons’ coffee cups in another while an Edmonton Oilers’ cap sat on the dash of the vehicle next to it.
By early yesterday, groups of snowmobilers prepared to leave McBride—some calling it a stressful weekend while others believed more painful emotions would set in later.
Two men said they were heading back to the scene to retrieve the sled of their friend, who had died.
“He was a very nice guy, a family man,” said Leo, who didn’t give his last name, of his friend John Garley.
He said preventing future deaths required “education,” but he described the scene on Friday as “just a bad situation.”
Neil Petryshen, from Saskatoon, said he and his friends hadn’t absorbed the loss yet, but suggested the tragedy wouldn’t stop them from going out again.
“Why doesn’t it stop us? There’s different types of brain mentality for sledders,” he remarked, noting they weren’t into going up extreme peaks.
“But the risk-takers, they want to go there,” he added.
“As you advance, you want to push the limits.”
Pelletier, 31, and her husband were among exhilarated teams of sledders who returned to the parking lot near the mountain’s base after ripping around in the mountains.
She said she’d first heard of the deaths when a news alert flashed on her smartphone.
Her first reaction was “total shock,” she noted. When she and her husband returned to McBride, they went to dinner at a restaurant that was packed with a sombre crowd.
“It was pretty heavy in there,” she recalled, after listening to rescuers describe pulling bodies and 12 survivors from the snow.
“They were just debriefing over a beer.”
But the couple still chose to head out the next morning on the mountain where the tragedy occurred.
Pelletier admitted feeling trepidation but was confident they took proper precautions. She checked the avalanche danger rating, hung an SOS beacon from her neck, and carried a probe and shovel.
“I guess I’m a risk-taker,” she admitted. “But you have to take calculated risks.”
Though she and her husband steered well clear of the avalanche site, from one vista they still could see vast cracks where snow bowls had been disturbed.
“You’ve got to go through a lot of sketchy areas to where those guys ended up,” she noted.
Pelletier was nowhere near the victims the day they died, but said she often had witnessed “showboating and a lot of testosterone” displayed in the male-dominated sport.
“When you go in big groups, I think there’s a mentality of one-upping each other,” she reasoned.
“We saw [the avalanche area] and said, ‘Why would you ever go up there?’”
Rock Major, from Saskatoon, said he wasn’t influenced by the fatalities because “I’m smarter than those guys.
“You don’t go out climbing the mountain at once,” he noted.
“Some people go there and they don’t belong there,” Major added. “You ride like your weakest rider is No. 1.”
His friend, Shawn Rudolph, said he wasn’t thinking about the deaths, either.
“You keep it in the back of your mind, but you don’t really think about it because it’ll just affect the way you treat the hill and get into a spot where you’re gun-shy and nervous.”
