BANFF – Grant Statham was a young boy growing up in a seaside town on Vancouver Island with spectacular views of Mount Olympus in Washington State, inspiring what has become a life and career beyond his wildest dreams.
“My whole life growing up, I was always drawn to the mountains. I started to climb in high school, and then I came here immediately after finishing high school and took a mountaineering course in Banff,” said Statham, who grew up in the beach community of Metchosin near Victoria and now calls Canmore home.
“Then I went back home and I climbed Mount Olympus that summer, which felt really great. I remember phoning my parents up and saying ‘I did it, I climbed Mount Olympus’. Then I was back here a month or two later and I’ve been here ever since.”
That was 1986 and Statham has never looked back.
Now, the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival has announced the pioneering mountain guide and avalanche safety specialist is the recipient of the 2022 Summit of Excellence Award, an annual award in memory of Calgary climber Bill March who led Canada’s first successful Everest climb in 1982. The award will be presented to Statham during the festival on Saturday (Oct. 29).
The list of past recipients reads like a “who’s who’’ of the mountain culture scene, and includes a diverse collection of mountaineers, authors, artists, photographers, mountain guides, musicians, teachers, and rescue specialists.
When Statham heard he was getting the prestigious acknowledgement, he felt incredibly proud and honoured to be on the list.
“I felt just an overwhelming sense of honour to be part of that list of people," he said, noting three local Canmore names and friends personally stood out for him – Tim Auger, a climbing legend and renowned search and rescue specialist for Parks Canada who died in 2018; Sharon Wood, who in 1986 became the first North American woman to climb Mount Everest; and Barry Blanchard, one of North America’s top alpinists.
"There was also a bit of a sense of disbelief because these aren’t things you expect. It took me a little while to adjust, and as I read more about it, I realized what kind of honour I was getting.”
With 35 years of wide-ranging experience in alpine and avalanche risk management and critical incident response, Statham has an extensive background in climbing and skiing and on-the-ground emergency first response.
Statham is perhaps most recognized as a pioneer and leader in avalanche safety.
Following the tragic avalanche deaths of 2003 at Roger’s Pass, he was responsible for conducting Parks Canada’s backcountry avalanche risk review, subsequently developing and implementing the policies and regulations around custodial groups in national parks.
On Feb. 1 2003, a group of teens from Strathcona-Tweedsmuir on a backcountry field trip - a longstanding tradition of the Calgary K-12 private school – got swept away in an avalanche rated 3 to 3.5 that ran about one kilometre long.
The teens were part of a group of 14 Grade 10 students and three adults that were caught in a slide in Connaught Creek Valley in Glacier National Park. Seven students – one girl and seven boys – tragically died. It prompted Parks Canada to overhaul its avalanche safety policies.
“I started with Parks in November 2003 and that was on the tail end of a really tough winter here. It’s a well known story now – 29 people were killed in avalanches, including seven kids in the Strathcona-Tweedsmuir accident,” said Statham. “This February it will be 20 years.”
To this day, Statham remains in touch with some of the parents who lost their children in that avalanche.
“I worked closely with them. I was a dad and so I had a lot of empathy and I could certainly feel what it would be like to be in that position,” he said.
“We had some hard conversations and we travelled some really tough ground together and we became close. In the end, they became a real ally and they helped me with the project."
At the same time he was implementing the 23 recommendations that came out of the report following the avalanche deaths, Statham led the development of the Avalanche Terrain Exposure Scale, North American Public Avalanche Danger Scale, Conceptual Model of Avalanche Hazard, and the AvalX public forecasting system – the main tools and resources still used by avalanche forecasters and in public avalanche bulletins in Canada and worldwide.
He helped form Avalanche Canada, has been an adjunct professor since 2016 at Simon Fraser University, and an alpine risk management consultant since 2013. He is the author of dozens of papers, conference proceedings and articles on the subject of avalanches, risk, and snow safety.
As a young ACMG mountain guide at 24, Statham worked his first 16 years in the outdoor industry ski patrolling, guiding rock, ice and alpine climbing, ski touring, helicopter skiing, expedition climbing, teaching avalanche courses, and working as an avalanche consultant.
Beginning in 2003, Statham has been guiding part-time and working for Parks Canada, first as their avalanche and mountain risk specialist, and since 2013 as a visitor safety specialist where he often has to climb or access extremely difficult routes via a helicopter sling to rescue those in peril.
Taking the job with Parks Canada after the tragic avalanche accidents was a career-altering position for Statham.
What started out as a two year job turned into 10 years as Parks Canada’s avalanche risk specialist.
“I learned so much about so many things. I briefed ministers, I developed contribution agreements, I worked with the Department of Justice – these are not things you do as a mountain guide,” he said.
“I had to try to learn how to knock down the bureaucracy road blocks and navigate all that stuff. It was really challenging and I found I was doing well and I was able to be successful there.”
After 10 years of policy work, Statham felt his work there was finished. He switched into a role with Banff, Yoho and Kootenay’s public safety team when a retirement opened up a competition for that job.
“I pivoted to becoming a visitor safety specialist and that was nine years ago,” he said.
In his time as a rescue specialist, Statham has taken on the role of post-incident liaison with family members, along with developing first responder mental health programs for Banff National Park.
“When I look back, some of the most rewarding parts of my career are the people I have met and the people I have helped. I really like helping people,” he said.
“Yes, it can be hard sometimes, but I find it honestly the most rewarding part of the work, knowing you could be there to help somebody in their most vulnerable moment in their whole life.”
In 2019, Statham was part of a team that led the difficult search and recovery operations on Howse Peak where Jess Roskelley, one of the most accomplished climbers of his generation, David Lama, and Hansjörg Auer tragically died attempting a second ascent of the route, M16.
Poor weather delayed the effort to recover the three renowned climbers, all part of an elite athletic team for the outdoor apparel giant, The North Face.
For this work on the high profile search and recovery operation, Statham was awarded the CEO’s Award of Excellence by Parks Canada.
“Howse Peak was a really big one, a really big one. It was really interesting and difficult working with families and trying to concentrate on the search,” he said.
“It’s great to be with such a strong team in Banff, Yoho and Kootenay, and honestly, I work with such an amazing team of people, and in some ways that’s the stuff we’re best at."
Statham continues to work as an avalanche risk advisor with all levels of government and the private sector, having written many consultancy reports in Canada as well as New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, and Japan.
He has written expert reports to legal and investigative teams in military, public and private sector incident investigations.
“I never ever intended to pursue work in this field, it was kind of by accident, “ he said.
"I moved out here, like many, when I was 17 – a climbing bum with some rope on my backpack and I got a job at Sunshine with my friend and my goal was to come up here for one winter, a gap year, before university and learn how to climb ice.”
Throughout his career, Statham has maintained his personal passion for climbing and skiing and is recognized as a friend and mentor of many.
There are perhaps too many highlights to mention, but climbing The Wild Thing on Mount Chephren 30 years ago was an alpine climbing milestone for Statham, making him realize he could climb those huge faces that had captured his imagination as a youngster.
Standing on top of 6,454-metre Bhagirathi Part III in India’s Garhwal Himalayas in 1995 with Brian Webster and James Blench was also one of life’s cherished moments.
“It was a real highlight after climbing a great big pillar,” he said.
There are many people along his career path that Statham would like to thank – Chris Chevalier, Marc Ledwidge, Bill Fisher, Chris Stethem and Roman Bilak to name just a few – but his biggest thanks go to his partner Leigh Ann Betts.
“I am so grateful to have the support at home. The phone often rings in the middle of the night and look who’s getting up and making me sandwiches and making me tea,” he said.
“It’s really important in our jobs to recognize the people that are with us on that stuff – she hears those difficult phone calls and has to take it in. I’m really grateful to her.”
In addition, there has been those who have inspired him to pursue his dreams, notably fellow Summit of Excellence Award recipients Auger, Wood and Blanchard.
As a 17-year-old, Statham met Parks Canada's Auger at Sunshine Village within his first month of arriving in Banff.
“Eventually I got to work with him and we became friends and we climbed together a lot and he was always a helping me. He was very important to me.”
Statham would meet Wood in 1986 – the same year she climbed Everest and the same year he arrived in Banff.
“She’s an aspiring person to a lot of people actually, like my fiends with daughters really look up to Sharon,” he said.
“She was one of my original climbing heroes when I was starting out – and still is.”
As for Blanchard, Statham was a young kid in high school when he knew of the climbing legend, who is known for pushing the standards of highly technical, high-risk alpine climbing in the Canadian Rockies and the Himalayas.
“My dad took me to see Barry talk and so Barry was always someone I had on a bit of a pedestal,” he said.
“Then I got to meet him and then I got to climb with him and then we became pretty good friends. I have always had a lot of respect for Barry for many reasons.”
For Statham, the concept of risk has been an important part of his personal and career journey.
In his TED talk presentation, he provides a framework that helps people live their lives and deal with risk, probability, consequence, exposure and vulnerability – and how to deal with uncertainty.
“If there’s one thing anybody can do to make themselves better in the mountains, other than actually going in the mountains, is learn about risk, learn how to use it and learn how to understand it,” said Statham.
"If it wasn’t for risk, well, we wouldn’t do anything. Thank God for risk and all these things we do, because we gain from this."
