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In the early 1960s, a Canada replete with war surplus suddenly struck on a winning idea to deal with Rocky Mountain avalanches: Why not just shoot at them?

More than 50 years later, we still are. In what is Canada’s longest-running military operation, every winter artillery units are dispatched into the mountains west of Banff to wage war on Mother Nature.

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“It would be a mistake to think that Rogers Pass has been subdued … every winter, the timeless forces of snowfall and avalanche batter away at the defences,” reads the unusually poetic Parks Canada description of Operation Palaci, the annual shelling of the mountains of Glacier National Park.

The operation has been carried out every year since the 1962 opening of the Trans-Canada Highway. And in principle, it’s relatively simple: Road crews close a section of highway, artillery units move in to blast away at snow pack, and then snow ploughs are dispatched to clear whatever hits the highway.

“You’re standing there and everybody just disappears and then everybody reappears and we dust ourselves off and fire at the next avalanche,” Sgt. Dave Jarrell, an Operation Palaci member, told Postmedia in 2015.