Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/112497
who describes Statham as a ���salt of the earth kind of guy��� and natural teacher whose dedication and passion are most obvious when he���s talking about mountains, avalanches and people. So in 2003, when seven highschool students died in an avalanche near Rogers Pass, prompting a Parks Canada review, it was Statham���s hard-won expertise and experience that put him at the front of the line for implementing its 36 backcountry safety recommendations. ���On my first day, I read my business card ��� mountain risk specialist ��� and didn���t know what ���risk��� meant,��� he recalls. ���As a guide we never talked about risk. But when I looked it up in the dictionary, I realized it was how I���d been making decisions in the mountains for 17 years, asking myself things like: ���If I fall off the mountain right now, what will happen?��� ��� As a kid, Statham called the rural Victoriaarea community of Metchosin home. ���So I grew up outdoors, climbing, hiking and camping with my dad.��� At age 17, in 1983, ice climbing drew him to Banff, where, ���like a lot of teens, I planned to spend only a year before university. That never happened.��� By age 24 he was an internationally certified guide leading heli-ski and climbing treks globally and pushing the limits of his already intense technical skills in his downtime. ���I was obsessed with hard climbing [8,000-metre Himalaya peaks, unclimbed routes in the Rockies and Selkirks] and first-ascents of mountains and waterfall-ice. Scary stuff.��� Any time left over involved avalanche and snow studies or teaching avalanche safety. But after his son, Ryan, was born, his outlook shifted. ���It was time for something different,��� he says. Then the parks job came up. It was the summer of 2003, and the only advice recreational users could access on avalanche terrain and conditions was a once- or twice-weekly bulletin put out by the Canadian Avalanche Association or Parks Canada. Covering huge geographic regions, these were a forecaster���s prediction of how dangerous backcountry conditions were and how the weather might affect them. Almost unchanged in 20 years, their format was also highly technical and full of jargon, albeit information rich ��� if a backcountry aficionado knew what to look for. For most users, particularly the growing tribe of backcountry skiers, snowboarders and snowmobilers, the information overload led only to confusion. ���We needed things to be way simpler,��� says Statham, beginning with an avalancheterrain exposure scale and the backcountry 22 W E S T W O R L D p20-23_Profile.indd 22 >> WINTER 2012 12-10-26 7:32 AM