Avalanches and user groups

Now that the Northwest backcountry season has started sadly with three avalanche fatalities, I was curious as to what the historical numbers were as far as which user groups tended to be involved in the highest number of avalanche incidents. Here's one version of the story, as derived from source material at www.avalanche.org/accidnt1.htm and using the reports for the previous three years, with all of North America.<br>Snowboarders and Skiers: 71<br>Snowmobilers: 69<br>Other: 10<br>Climbers: 7<br>Snowshoers and Hikers: 6<br><br>The fine print:<br>* I was counting incidents, not fatalities, and counted incidents whether or not they included fatalities. You could also use this same report to make the latter report but it would take some data massage.<br>* I decided to combine skiers and snowboarders, note that a fair number of those incidents involved some kind of in-bounds-out-of-bounds events such as paying customers crossing area ropes, but that would also take some more data massage to tease out.<br>* Relative percentages and size of each user group nowhere to be seen here, it's just the numbers.<br>* "Other" included (literally) planes, trains and automobiles (ok, not trains really ...) and stuff that for whatever reason wasn't otherwise categorized. <br><br>Lessons: Make your own. I was driven to research this because of the recent Blewett fatality, and was wondering whether there was an increase in the number of snowmobilers caught in avalanches due to the major "improvements" recently in snow-machine power and greater ad hoc observation as well as media reportage of the highmarking craze. I'm not a sledder, so maybe I'm offbase. But intiuitively, I can't think of a better non-ordnance way to encourage a slope release than to drive a 600+ pound machine up some untested 30-45 degree slope at full throttle, load the slope's top with the machine while it's moving pretty slowly, and probably making a deep parabola shaped cut right where the machine slowed down at the high mark (which probably denotes a change in slope angle, too). So I wanted to see whether statistics and incident reports said anything about highmarking and avalanches. See for yourself (in source material).<br>