NOLS...it's a good thing.

[truth]

Jill Fredston
Avalanche Specialist

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Two-time NOLS grad Jill Fredston has always been into snow. “I have been interested in snow since I was a little girl,” Fredston says. “I was also the kind of kid who whined when I was cold.”


Now, at 45, Fredston is one of the country’s most recognized avalanche educators and has spent countless hours suspended above avalanche fracture lines, peering closely at an icy world that’s always changing. “What I love about snow is that the one constant is its variability,” she says. “What you see today isn’t going to be out there tomorrow and that’s really fun.”


When Fredston returned home from her NOLS Adventure course in 1973, she built a fire in the backyard of her suburban home in Westchester County, New York. Her passion for the outdoors ignited into a series of summers spent in the backcountry, including a NOLS Prince William Sound Sea Kayaking course in 1975. After earning a bachelor’s degree in geography and environmental studies at Dartmouth College, Fredston followed her childhood calling and received a master’s degree in polar studies and snow from the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University in England.


After graduating from Cambridge, Fredston went to work for the University of Alaska. “Anything frozen was deemed my purview,” she recalls. Shortly after her arrival, she was put in charge of the Alaska Avalanche Forecast Center, though she hadn’t yet seen an avalanche. In 1986, she and her husband, Doug Fesler, created the Alaska Mountain Safety Center, where they educate the public about avalanche hazard evaluation and have investigated hundreds of avalanches, deciphering the complex chain of events that trigger a slide. The couple’s 1984 book Snow Sense: A Guide to Evaluating Avalanche Hazard has sold more than 130,000 copies and has become required reading in the NOLS winter classroom.


Over the years, Fredston has seen a lot of snow. Most days during the Alaska winter, she’s either teaching about snow, investigating avalanche accidents, or else, unfortunately, leading an avalanche rescue. For the past 20 years, she and Fesler have been involved in most of the avalanche rescues in Alaska.


In a big place like Alaska, one thing Fredston says she can always count on is big avalanches. In 1983, she rappelled into a slide that had fractured 36 feet deep and 1,700 feet across the slope. The slide had moved a billion pounds of snow in less than 30 seconds, filling an area equivalent to 22 football fields. She and Fesler determined that it would have taken 75,000 dump truck loads to remove the snow.


Despite all the snow, Fredston says she still isn’t tired of it. But she and her husband do seek out a different kind of wilderness when the snow stops flying. Her book Rowing to Latitude chronicles the thousands of miles they’ve logged in their converted sea kayaks each summer, exploring the rugged shorelines of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Spitsbergen and Norway. Carrying what they need to be self-sufficient, Fredston says she still “does things kind of a NOLS way—lots of little tiny things like the way I tie the knot on tent strings, or the way I’m pretty fanatical about leaving no sign that we’ve been somewhere.”


But they always paddle back to the snow. “The process of learning about avalanches has been a fascinating one for me because it’s a combination of being in the mountains and also trying to figure out a scientific phenomenon,” Fredston says. “In my lifetime I’ll never see all the combinations of snow layers. I’ll never get tired of the power of avalanches.”


Brad Sawtell
Avalanche Forecaster

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Brad Sawtell’s day starts early, usually around 4 a.m. Before even going outside, he’s looking at weather models and gathering data so Colorado’s ski areas and backcountry travelers know what the weather will bring that day—and the day after that. An avalanche forecaster at the Colorado Avalanche Infor-mation Center, Sawtell is sometimes stepping into his skis before most people have even climbed into their cars for the morning commute.


“Weather,” says Sawtell, “is the architect of avalanches.” In the field, he does stability tests and looks closely at the snowpack. He’ll also go out of bounds at many Colorado ski resorts, digging snowpit after snowpit to determine how high the avalanche danger is that day. It’s a big responsibility, but, he says with a glow, “It’s a dream job. I get to go skiing everyday and get paid for it.”


Snow isn’t a foreign substance to Sawtell. He was a ski racer at Colorado State University before taking a NOLS Semester in the Rockies in 1990 and becoming a NOLS Instructor in 1992. In the field with NOLS, he especially liked teaching winter courses, and became more and more intrigued with snow. He has spent the past four winters as a part-time avalanche forecaster and, beginning this year, will be on full-time.


When Sawtell’s not forecasting avalanches, he’s usually teaching people how to avoid them. From college groups, to snowmobile clubs, snowplow drivers and ski patrollers, his clinics serve an important role in Summit County, where he lives.


“I like that I’m doing something for the community,” Sawtell says. “It’s important to me to be related to a community as well as to help educate the community on avalanches and hazards.”


The grim part of being an avalanche forecaster, says Sawtell, are the accident reports. He was on five body recoveries last winter, which he equates to investigative reporting. His reports are circulated throughout the skiing community and, he says, are hopefully a way for people to learn about the dangers. “I’m not out there to make the backcountry safe, but to give the public more information so they can make better decisions,” Sawtell says.


As a forecaster, Sawtell gets to keep up his NOLS skills even though he’s not in the field with NOLS students as much. “The skills I’ve learned at NOLS are what I use everyday,” he says, “I have to make real decisions that not only affect me, but also the general public. All those skills grew while I was at NOLS. I think about that all the time. I’ve learned a standard that I believe in and need to uphold.”


He also gets to keep learning. “I never get sick of snow. I’m intrigued by it, I learn from it, and I’m humbled by it. Everyday I learn something new, and after working for NOLS, I love learning.”


Sawtell’s favorite part of the day is when he updates the daily telephone message at the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. In the message, he explains his field reports—the shooting cracks, and the weak and strong layers—and he tries to sound friendly but serious. “Everyday I hope I’m reaching out to someone. It makes me want to do that much better of a job so that I can generate the best forecasts I possibly can.”

[truth]

Ian McCammon
Avalanche Researcher

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It’s hard to imagine that standing knee-deep in a snow pit looking at snow stability has anything to do with robotics or aerospace design. But for NOLS Instructor Ian McCammon, who has a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, the two kinds of research are surprisingly similar. At the University of Utah, during what McCammon calls his “former life,” he designed sensory systems for robotics and aerospace systems for organizations like NASA and the Department of Defense.


Before long, McCammon, who grew up skiing back East, was drawn to a different kind of science—the white, fluffy variety. “My engineering background gave me an appreciation for the scientific end of snow science,” McCammon says. “Things like snow mechanics and metamorphosis. I bring the tools of classical engineering to snow science.”


As McCammon shifted his engineering background from space to snow—and began to spend more and more time in the winter backcountry with NOLS students—the science of snow continually intrigued him. “For me, snow is a fascinating material just in how complex it is. It’s full of mystery.” Part of this complexity, says McCammon, is how relatively new snow science is. According to McCammon, people have only been studying snow since the ’40s and ’50s, and it doesn’t get a lot of funding so it doesn’t advance quickly. It’s also vastly different from anything else in the scientific field. “It’s a very exciting new world,” he says. “Most of our science and math have been developed for matter that is far from its melting point. But with snow we’re trying to analyze something that’s near its melting point.”


McCammon has also begun to construct in his mind some trends in how people think about snow. In between NOLS courses, he now spends much of his time looking at how people make decisions in risky situations. Along with a private engineering consulting business, McCammon passes his findings on to other snow scientists at conferences and seminars around the country.


He has started Snowpit Technologies, his own project that focuses on avalanche education, high risk decision making, and how fracture mechanics apply to snow stability. Sound complicated? McCammon gets into the complexities of snow, but he also wants it to make sense to the non-scientists out there. “Some people come to avalanche courses wanting to know all the gory details about snow science,” he admits. “But some of them are taking it because they want to avoid the hazards, and that’s simple to teach. There are a handful of clues that you can base your decisions on—you don’t need any science background for that.”


When it comes down to it, McCammon’s explanation for why he likes snow is surprisingly simple considering his background “I like snow because it’s fun to play in, and because it teaches us about ourselves,” he says. While McCammon says he goes through phases—he’s had his robotics phase and is now deep into his snow science phase—McCammon doesn’t think he’ll tire of snow for awhile. “During the winter,” he says, “things are stripped down to their basics; things are very simple but very complex at the same time. Snow is just so complex it never ceases to amaze me.”

[truth]

Whatever.

[kb1dqh]

I'm doing a NOLS semester in Alaska (w/ the mountaineering section) this summer. Over 70 days in wilderness backpacking, mountaineering, sea kayacking, learning- can't wait!! It's instead of a semester in college because I get credit for it!! So stoked, kb

[char]

In 1983, she rappelled into a slide that had fractured 36 feet deep and 1,700 feet across the slope.

Holy crap.

[Omen]

Originally posted by kb1dqh
I'm doing a NOLS semester in Alaska (w/ the mountaineering section) this summer. Over 70 days in wilderness backpacking, mountaineering, sea kayacking, learning- can't wait!! It's instead of a semester in college because I get credit for it!! So stoked, kb

That's an awesome course. I did the one in the Wind Rivers back an 88. One of the best things I 've ever done.

[elevens]

I also did the Wind River course but in '93. Taught me skills that I still use to this day. I highly recommened NOLS. Great experience.

Leave no trace.......what an amazing motto

elevens

[Mountain Junkie]

Originally posted by elevens
Leave no trace.......what an amazing motto

That's not specific to NOLS. In any case, that should be everyone's motto while in the backcountry. Otherwise, you shouldn't be back there at all.

[CaddyDaddy77]

In a big place like Alaska, one thing Fredston says she can always count on is big avalanches. In 1983, she rappelled into a slide that had fractured 36 feet deep and 1,700 feet across the slope. The slide had moved a billion pounds of snow in less than 30 seconds, filling an area equivalent to 22 football fields. She and Fesler determined that it would have taken 75,000 dump truck loads to remove the snow.

JEEEEBUUS!!

Anyone know of any pictures of this slide?
I'm curious to see the slope and what caused such a massive fracture.

[elevens]

Strongly Agree

That's not specific to NOLS. In any case, that should be everyone's motto while in the backcountry. Otherwise, you shouldn't be back there at all.