One of the greatest satisfactions of my career is having conversations with others about this world. With permission, I am reprinting a recent piece of correspondence from an Army officer who is frequently deployed to the middle east. I spent time in the middle east as a naval intelligence officer in Desert Storm in the early 90s. Drew, I hope all is well. It’s Derek, the skier/soldier, we chatted a little last year. Of course my luck, I deployed in March and missed the amazing finish to last season, but so is military life. I’m back and already getting …

In this podcast, we sit down with Doug Workman. Doug is an alpine guide but is considered the real deal as far as international ski guiding goes. Doug is one of the more thoughtful and insightful people in the mountains that you'll meet and his philosophy on guiding may not be what you think. Doug Workman has been taking risks on the snow since he was a toddler learning to ski at Powder Ridge in Connecticut. Since then he has found many other places to experiment with risk taking and risk management—Alaska, Pakistan, Iceland, China, Morocco, Svalbard, Antarctica, and in …

Brief history: Snow fell in October and became faceted. In early to mid-November, warm weather formed a crust on top of this layer which remained on north and east-facing slopes. Warm weather melted snow off of south and west-facing aspects. A little more snow fell on top of the crust around Nov 20th, and this snow faceted. All these facets formed the persistent weak layer that is now at the bottom of the snowpack. When heavy snowfall arrived during the week of Thanksgiving, many avalanches fractured on this persistent weak layer. Some avalanche failed on facets above the crust. Some …

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, December 13 through Thursday, December 19, 2019: Summary: A strong, windy, and wet storm system entered the region on Thursday, December 12, and by the time the system departed on Sunday morning, storm totals included: - Little Cottonwood Canyon: 31" snow (3.6" water) - Big Cottonwood Canyon: 35" snow (3.5" water) - …

In this podcast, we sit down with Jenna Malone. At this fall's Utah Snow and Avalanche Workshop, Jenna gave a compelling presentation on why avalanche decision making is more like poker than chess. In essence, with chess, we can see all the different pieces of the puzzle; one only needs to "outsmart" her opponent. Poker, on the other hand, involves a little bit of luck and the uncertainty of what cards your opponent holds. Not everything is revealed. Inspired by champion poker player Annie Duke's book Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts, …

NOTE: This blog post was written in December 2019 when there was similar weak snow at the ground to December 2020 except when this blog was written, there was a slab of snow on all slopes. This slab was an avalanche problem where the weak snow existed underneath it. As of December 5, 2020, most mountain areas in Utah have weak snow at the ground but no slab on top of it to produce an avalanche. In many areas of Utah, the main avalanche problem that is causing large deadly avalanches is a slab of snow resting on a persistent weak layer of faceted snow. That's a mouthful. What …

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, December 6 through Thursday, December 12, 2019: Summary: Continued avalanching in weak snow down near the ground on mid and upper elevation northerly aspects. A decent storm system on Sunday delivers 6-12" of dense snow/graupel containing 0.8-1.5" water. A multi-day storm commences on Thursday, with additional dense snow totaling 4-8" …