Eastern Snow and Avalanche Workshop- ESAW 2013 = November 9th 2013: SAVE THE DATE!

[Jonathan S.]

Eastern Snow and Avalanche Workshop- ESAW 2013 = November 9th 2013: SAVE THE DATE!

On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 1:20 PM, Christopher Joosen wrote:
Although winter seems like such a long way off I suspect we’ll see flakes in the high country within weeks. As they pile up the menace of avalanches won’t be far behind so I’m happy to announce the upcoming ESAW 2013 on Saturday November 9th in North Conway, NH.

About 25 years ago during the first avalanche cycle of the season I recall a conversation I had with a friend of mine. It was my first winter on Mount Washington and was eager to learn about the avalanche phenomenon. Confidently, after seeing the natural activity expected I said, “Chuck I think I’m starting to know what I’m talking about!” Looking back I get embarrassed just thinking about what I said because all these years later, after so many hard lessons in the mountains, I can barely say now what I did then. The more I learn it becomes more obvious that I’m just at the tip of the iceberg of knowing everything about the fracture and failure of snow lying on a slope.

This gap in knowledge is what keeps me motivated to learn all I can and also alive in the field. 100% certainty about the current snow stability is so rarely possible it makes me cautious, thoughtful, question, and seek more information. And this keeps me alive. As I’ve stated before, when we think we’ve got snow figured out we’re surprised again and again. There are no experts, we are all students.

The Eastern Snow and Avalanche Workshop in North Conway, NH is a place to bring together avalanche-minded individuals to share their enthusiasm for snow and discuss topics related to the winter in cold steep climates. It continues to be an annual gathering of avalanche professionals, educators, guides, and backcountry skiing and climbing enthusiasts in the Northeast. It may be for personal interest, to fulfill continuing education and professional development needs, or the impending excitement for the upcoming winter.

In the coming week Registration and Workshop information will all occur online at www.esaw.org. I will follow up this “save the date” email with another message when online registration is up and running. You can make any contact with us through this email address. The registration fee will again be $75.00, which includes all the talks, several raffles throughout the day, coffee, donuts/fruit and social at IME with hops and barley.

Any remaining funds will go to The White Mountain Avalanche Education Fund set up to educate kids of the northeast about avalanches. For more information follow this link to the Mount Washington Avalanche Center website. If you are a teacher or a coach of High School students please let me know if you are interested in your young adults coming to ESAW at no charge.

We look forward to seeing all of you at ESAW 2013 in North Conway NH on November 9th! Please forward this to anyone you feel may be interested.

Chris Joosen
Director Mount Washington Avalanche Center
White Mountain National Forest

[icelanticskier]

thanx for posting

rog

[east or bust]

Definitely a good idea, brings me back to when I saw this video last year. Yikes.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIzGmHjjQtU

[Jonathan S.]

Definitely a good idea, brings me back to when I saw this video last year. Yikes.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIzGmHjjQtU

Yikes indeed!
Thanks for posting that -- I don't recall seeing it at the time.
The narrator provides an excellent assessment of how you can get into such relatively rare New England below-treeline avalanche terrain.
I highly recommend watching the entire video, although if you just want to skip ahead to the grand finale of sorts, then here is a screen grab from the video (which in turn is of a still photo) -- pretty serious crown there:

[Jonathan S.]

The days are getting shorter, the first frost advisory was issued for the season, delivery truck drivers are staggering up to my porch under the weight of all the donated raffle prize schwag, and sales reps are looking into booking flights to staff the vendor displays . . . so must be time to register for ESAW:

http://www.esaw.org/registration/

New this year: your $75 registration fee gets you a $10 IME gift certification if upon ESAW in-person check-in you show a current membership/certification card from any of the following:
AAA, AAC, AIARE, AMGA, APP, CAA, MWOBS, NSP, PSPA

And same deal if you show proof of completion for a three-day L1 (or higher) avy course within the past two seasons.

[neufox47]

Signed up. Lets hope I get to use my ticket this year.

[dark_star]

Also signed up. Looking forward to seeing you guys there.

[neufox47]

Sweet, you ever find a avy bag fill place?

[dark_star]

No, but I haven't exactly been looking hard. I imagine I'll get a little more motivated once the first frost hits

[Jonathan S.]

Sorry for the lack of recent updates, but our planning process went on hold when the USFS snow rangers were furloughed.
So now that the world's only superpower once again has a gov't, we will have the presentation schedule posted soon.
Sneak preview is that our western speaker representation will include Doug Richmond (of Bridger Bowl & the American Avalanche Institute) and possibly also Dale Atkins (essentially the U.S.'s foremost authority on avy rescue).
Plus lots of raffle prizes too:
http://www.esaw.org/sponsors/

[Jonathan S.]

Sorry for the lack of recent updates, but our planning process went on hold when the USFS snow rangers were furloughed.
So now that the world's only superpower once again has a gov't, we will have the presentation schedule posted soon.
Sneak preview is that our western speaker representation will include Doug Richmond (of Bridger Bowl & the American Avalanche Institute) and possibly also Dale Atkins (essentially the U.S.'s foremost authority on avy rescue).
Plus lots of raffle prizes too:
http://www.esaw.org/sponsors/

And more:

- Continuing an annual theme of "Eastern avies somewhere other than the Prezzies" we will once again have Gaspe/Chic-Chocs, and new for this year will be Baxter/Katahdin.
- If you were there in 2011, then you definitely remember the woman who presented on upslope snow: a very intense and captivating speaker! So, she's back, this time on field wx obs in dynamic conditions.
- Tim Brown, a fully certified IFMGA guide, is flying in from CO to teach an avalanche instructor refresher course the following day. I'm not even going to bother listing his topic, since he was such a good presenter at our last refresher course two years ago that he can make any topic valuable and interesting!
- Roger Damon (who has been teaching avy courses since the 1960s) will present on avalanches in-bounds at ski resorts...in the East! (One of the incidents is kind of like the Monty Python castle swamp skit.)
- Panel discussion by int'l climbers on avoiding big avalanches on big mountains...ya know, like the equivalent of the Northeast Snowfield sliding and then taking out Joe Dodge Lodge!
- A world's leading authority on snow physics, Sam Colebeck, will for the third year in a row present on something I can't understand at all. The topic is different this year, but since I won't be able to understand it, the topic is kind of irrelevant. Still fun being overwhelmed like this, plus the microscope pictures are really cool too!
- AvaTech. So what is AvaTech? Googling reveals just kind of a shell website. But here is a teaser pic from their guest presentation at any avy course I was teaching this weekend -- it's essentially the future of snowpit hardness profiles ... today:

[Jonathan S.]

So four of the ESAW presenters will be from outside the Eastern U.S., wow!

Abbreviated schedule as follows:

7:30 Begin showing up.

8:15 Introductory remarks.

8:30 How to make avy-related wx obs, by the same MWOBS presenter we had in 2011 (bio second from the bottom)

9:15 Baxter/Katahdin

10:00 Raffle & rest break (plus we’ll have some vendor displays at ESAW this time, as opposed to just at IME post-ESAW)

10:15 Sidecountry human factors, by Doug Richmond, Bridger ski patrol director

11:00 Shorter sessions including Chic-Chocs (the same wonderfully accented presenter as last year!), Eastern snowmaking avies (Roger Damon, who’s been teaching avy courses since the 1960s), AvaTech (they did a guest presentation at the avy course I was teaching this past weekend – MIT snowpit wizardry!)

12:00 Raffle and lunch

1:00 Wet snow physics that you probably won’t fully understand (but very cool to hear anything from Sam Colbeck, retired from CRREL)

1:45 Uncertainty in Avy Decision Making (by Dale Atkins, head honcho of *the* American Avalanche Association, plus in general the nation’s authority on avy rescue)

2:30 Raffle & break

2:45 Using “Avalanche Problem” Descriptors to Communicate Risk, by Tim Brown, IFMGA guide and Instructor Trainer for the American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education

3:30 Shorter Sessions including Mt W’s Meteorological Variability (USFS snow ranger Jeff Lane & a person whose name would imply another charming foreign female accent but unfortunately the bio indicates otherwise), RECCO (Dale Atkins again), Bridger avy safety (Doug Richmond of course)

4:30 Closing remarks and walk around the corner to IME for some combination of more vendor displays, socializing, and beer

[neufox47]

Awesome, can't wait. There are still a bunch of tickets, so don't miss out.

[grubbers]

I'll probably be attending this. Anyone else making the drive up for the day from the Boston area?

[cat in january]

This sounds interesting. Can't imagine it being in my gear bag in the next 5 years, but I look forward to what the minds at MIT have come up with. My pits don't take an hour, but more data helps to fill in the picture more. I could see Avalanche Forecasters using this to provide a fuller picture of the snowpack if it works effectively in the field.

From the Boston Business Journal:
One team looked at the increase in avalanche accidents resulting from the growing popularity of winter adventure sports. “Hundreds of people die each year,” said Allie Owens, an MBA student at Sloan. “The market now offers only reactive solutions, shovels and airbags.”
The solution: the AvaTech, a collapsible pole with built-in sensors that can be plunged into snow to measure the density of the frosty layers. Winter hikers have already learned how to read snow layers to discern the likelihood of avalanche, but to get that information they have to dig snow pits, a tedious job that can take an hour or more. The AvaTech requires just a few minutes at most -- which means hikers will be getting a lot more data, and spend more time at their sport.

[NoPostholio]

^^^^that actually looks very interesting. As Jonathan said their website is kind of enigmatic. 4 heavy thinkers from MIT getting involved in snow science can't be a bad thing (except to rog). Think I will head up for this shindig...

[icelanticskier]

a pole handle carefully plunged down into the snow works pretty damn well, as does a gloved hand for shallower story telling..........

what will they think to think of next?

rog

[I've seen black diamonds!]

"the AvaTech, a collapsible pole with built-in sensors that can be plunged into snow to measure the density of the frosty layers. "

I would think that real advantage of a device like this would not be for detecting weak layers or measuring stability, but for detecting variation in the snowpack, something pits aren't good for unless you do nothing but dig pits all day.

[Jonathan S.]

That Boston Business Journal excerpt is typical of their standard canned presentation, which is probably fine for a general audience...but struck me as often cringe-inducing for any sort of avy-savvy audience...especially their reactive vs proactive supposed dichotomy, which is complete bs since their product is an improvement upon existing “proactive” assessment tools – an amazingly vast improvement, but still, plenty of “proactive” tools already exist for snowpack assessment.
(We’ll see if they take up my suggested modifications for ESAW!)
And yes, a snowpit shouldn’t take an entire hour. As a benchmark, when a friend recently took this course:
http://www.americanavalancheinstitut...i3/level-3.php
... the final exam entailed a full snowpit assessment within 30 minutes, but that also included stability tests (which is beyond this device, except indirectly from inferring stability only via the two factors of strength & structure, yet missing out on energy).
Maybe, hmm, 20 minutes of that would be the hardness profile?
Which is reduced to something like 20 seconds (or was it 10 seconds?) or less with their tool.
(Which includes detecting weak layers, although the big issue is going to be how thin a weak layer they can reliably detect, which has been a problem with other penetrometers.)
As I told my class, as Tremper sez, something 100 quick jabs with your ski pole or grabs with your hand can be better than one full snowpit in the same amount of time.
But now in that same amount of time, you can do 100 detailed hardness profiles (far beyond what a ski pole or hand can do), wirelessly transmitted (complete with GPS coordinates of course) to your phone, then automatically mapped (hello spatial variability!), eventually crowdsourced with hardness profiles from other users.
As CiJ noted, might never be very attractive for a typical recreationalist in a forecasted area, which could be a huge boon for professional avy fx’ers, and in turn could greatly enhance our understanding of the bigger picture for wx > snowpack > avalanches, both in general and the patterns of typical mountain ranges.

[NoPostholio]

what will they think to think of next?

rog

A heads up display for your goggles that will scan the slope in front of you to detect weaknesses in the snowpack - very star trekian. You luddites are gonna hate it -

[icelanticskier]

meh, goggles. sunglasses?

rog

[NoPostholio]

yes, there will be a google glass version put onto some oakley frogskinz for you to beta test...

[icelanticskier]

yes, there will be a google glass version put onto some oakley frogskinz for you to beta test...

you are very observant. scarily so

rog

[neufox47]

As I told my class, as Tremper sez, something 100 quick jabs with your ski pole or grabs with your hand can be better than one full snowpit in the same amount of time.
But now in that same amount of time, you can do 100 detailed hardness profiles (far beyond what a ski pole or hand can do), wirelessly transmitted (complete with GPS coordinates of course) to your phone, then automatically mapped (hello spatial variability!), eventually crowdsourced with hardness profiles from other users.
As CiJ noted, might never be very attractive for a typical recreationalist in a forecasted area, which could be a huge boon for professional avy fx’ers, and in turn could greatly enhance our understanding of the bigger picture for wx > snowpack > avalanches, both in general and the patterns of typical mountain ranges.

Man when you think of the possibilities of that data if this thing became as common as a beacon... Could revolutionize forecasting. Having hard data of the observations of those who came before you.

[dark_star]

Dumb question (maybe), but I can’t seem to find where in North Conway this shindig will be going down. Anyone know?