It started with a menacing “whoosh” and a “Watch it!” before a slab of mountainside broke loose under the skis of Montgomery (Monty) Atwater, swallowing him in its crushing embrace.

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Atwater was in Alta, Utah, purposefully triggering avalanches by cutting across the slopes on skis to make the run safe for waiting skiers.

‘The way of the future’: Goodbye guns, hello avalanche-exploding drones at Whistler Back to video

“The whole mountain was coming at me, or at a rough estimate, a thousand tons of it,” he wrote in his book, Avalanche Hunters.

He tumbled down the mountain, being crushed and suffocated. Only luck caused him to be spat out from under the snow.

At that point, in the early 1950s, the Second World War veteran — a winter warfare instructor who fought for the U.S. in northern Europe — figured there had to be a better way to do avalanche control. So he came up with the most American of answers: He’d just blow it up.

Atwater convinced the U.S. army to provide him with two out-of-date French 75-millimetre howitzers, and started blasting avalanche-prone runs at Alta ski resort.

He is considered the grandfather of the dominant method for clearing mountains for the past 80 years. Around the world, howitzers and recoilless rifles — a weapon similar to a bazooka — are used to purposefully trigger avalanches.

But technology has caught up with the technique.

In late March on Whistler Peak, after the final skier had cleared the mountain on the last day of the season, an Alta X drone lifted off with explosives on board, successfully dropping a test charge designed to trigger an avalanche. It was a first for any Canadian ski resort.

U.S. company Drone Amplified designed the drone’s MONTIS system, with Squamish-based Alpine Solutions Avalanche Services conducting the test. It came after a long wait for Transport Canada to grant final approval.

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“The use of the howitzers is actually kind of one of the reasons that we got into this, and why we were approached to do this,” said Dan Justa, vice-president at Drone Amplified.

“The howitzers in the U.S. are going away. They’re older … the guns that they have, at least up in Alaska, are like Korean War-era guns. And they’re running out of ammunition that was produced for it. When it’s gone, it’s gone. And they’re not really able to get new updated systems — (those are) actively used, and the military in the U.S. doesn’t like civilian agencies having massive howitzers.

“That became a big thing in the industry. ‘What are they going to do when the guns go away?’”

There are other methods of deliberately triggering an avalanche. Ski patrollers who ascend mountains to throw, by hand, charges with 90-second fuses onto the target slopes. Helicopters can deliver them, but it’s costly and dangerous, hovering metres from the slopes as the explosions go off.

Such methods can also risk triggering a slide prematurely, sending the active explosive on an uncontrolled trip down the side of the mountain, where it could detonate in unwanted areas.

The MONTIS system uses an electronic trigger to detonate in an airburst just above the surface, which has a more effective concussive force and allows for more precision targeting.

Howitzers — like the one the Canadian Forces uses to help keep Rogers Pass clear — or pole-based systems that can drop charges or set off gas-explosions, are limited in their ability to change locations. Same goes for systems that companies such as France-based Lacroix, that shoot explosive arrows in its Avalauncher — essentially a giant blow dart gun.

Drones aren’t limited by that.

“You can kind of get in there quick,” said Carrick Detweiler, Drone Amplified’s CEO.

“So before lifts open, you can just go up and do it, or after the lifts close, you can do it. Ski patrollers are pretty quick at getting places, but there are some locations that can take a long time. And certainly getting a helicopter to a site is not something that you would want to pay for on a daily basis.”

Another company, New Brunswick-based AVSS, has also been granted Transport Canada’s special flight operations certificate, which is needed for any high-risk drone activities. AVSS recently tested its avalanche control SnowDart system in Jasper National Park.

Citing privacy concerns, Transport Canada wouldn’t list the number of companies they are certified to drop explosives from drones, but outlined the long and comprehensive list of standards, compliance and certifications any operators would have to attain before activation. Drone use is prohibited in Parks Canada without permission from each sector’s superintendent.

“Drones are a new and game-changing generation of aircraft in Canada’s aviation sector,” said Sau Sau Liu, a spokeswoman at Transport Canada. “Drones have redefined aviation using groundbreaking technologies and have exponentially increased the number of both recreational and commercial drone pilots sharing the airspace. Furthermore, they have changed how many services are delivered in Canada and have become part of the business operations of key commercial sectors.

“Transport Canada’s approach to drones, like other aviation sectors, is predicated on ensuring a safe and secure airspace system while creating a regulatory environment that is predictable for industry and conducive to innovation.”

Thirteen people have died in avalanches in B.C. in 2026 alone. The idea that resorts, and, eventually, backcountry users could protect themselves would be a giant leap in winter safety.

Drone Amplified’s MONTIS system has been used in Alaska for several years, but the test in Whistler represents a new expansion into Canada. The company is well-regarded in the firefighting world, where their IGNIS system has been used to drop Ping-Pong sized incendiaries for years — including in Canada. IGNIS allows wildfire techs to ignite prescribed burns to control wildfires or prevent new ones.

The Alta X, built by the company in Seattle, is a heavy-lift quadcopter drone platform that can carry a payload up to 16 kilograms and ranges in price from $25,000 to $55,000.

“One of the big leaps is just getting approval in Canada,” Detweiler said. “The state of Alaska has approval to do it, but the FAA has not given the same kind of like blanket (approval to) use it anywhere in the U.S. So Canada is actually first in enabling this type of technology. The regulatory stuff is a big leap.

“For MONTIS, we really want to continue to grow its use across Canada and into the U.S. It’s clearly going to take some time to be adopted, but I think this is the way of the future.”