Thanks so much to Vlad for sharing his story. These stories need to be told - As told by Vlad - Jackie and I woke up early on Saturday, January 5th, trying to beat the Wasatch traffic rat-race on a weekend. We were both excited to go skiing. She just started a new clinical rotation, and I just moved to the Salt Lake City UDOT office for my job. We needed to go in the mountains and recharge as we often do. We walked the dog, ate some breakfast, and organized our gear for the day. Checking the avalanche forecast we saw the 2nd day in a row with green on the rose compass …

Our Week in Review highlights significant snowfall, weather, and avalanche events of the previous week. (Click here to review the archived forecasts for the Salt Lake mountains.) The danger roses for the Salt Lake mountains from Friday March 1 through Thursday March 7: Summary: Continued storms deposit snow through the weekend, with warming and strong southwest winds early in the week. Stronger storm system delivers dense snow late in the week. Friday March 1 - 3-6" dense snow improve riding conditions, and no backcountry avalanches are reported. Saturday March 2 - 2-4" …

Human Performance in Uncertain Environments By LAURA MAGUIRE, M.Sc Graduate Researcher Cognitive Systems Engineering Lab (this piece soon to be published in the periodical of the American Avalanche Association, The Avalanche Review and built upon her original work presented in Innsbruck Austria in Fall 2018 - Sense-making in the Snow: Examining the Cognitive Work of Avalanche Forecasting in a Canadian Ski Operation) How we perceive risk and make decisions can be subject to flawed thinking and dangerous biases, but this is only one small dimension of a much broader …

Low Danger – Trust in Allah, But Tie Your Camel by Russ Costa Having spent the morning of Saturday, January 5th sitting in a classroom, I was excited to get up in the mountains and onto the snow in the afternoon. I was observing a backcountry clinic that day, collecting some data, and thinking about how best to teach decision-making in avalanche terrain. Although there wouldn’t be much skiing today, it would be good just to stretch my legs and breathe mountain air. I had read the Salt Lake area avalanche forecast in the morning over coffee, as is habit. The avalanche …

In this podcast, we sit down with Eeva Latosuo and Aleph Johnston-Bloom to discuss the role and importance of mentorship in the greater avalanche community. We talk about how mentorship influences workplace safety and culture and map out our different roles and responsibilities over the arc of one's career. Their research included interviewing scores of professionals - both young and old - and finding commonalities and themes within the concept of mentorship in the avalanche profession. Eeva Latosuo is faculty at Alaska Pacific University, avalanche educator at Alaska …

Our Week in Review highlights significant snowfall, weather, and avalanche events of the previous week. (Click here to review the archived forecasts for the Salt Lake mountains.) The danger roses for the Salt Lake mountains from Friday Feb 2 through Thursday Feb 28: Summary: Stable conditions early in the weekend, with strong westerly winds and warming temperatures beginning Sunday and lasting through the week. Primary avalanche hazard included wind drifts at the mid and upper elevations, and some wet loose activity in lower elevations, especially in the Ogden-area mountains. To …

Preface As told by Derek DeBruin - We’d been home just long enough to say hello to my wife and son and then unload the car from a few days of winter mixed climbing in Utah’s west desert. With both work and personal outings coming up in the next week, I was catching up on weather forecasts, the avalanche bulletin, and field observations. Standing in front of the fridge, I scrolled through a large list of avalanches in the central Wasatch for the previous day, January 5th. My climbing partner found the chips and salsa while I settled on an orange, sharing the …