Rod Newcomb, Avalanche Education Pioneer, Dies at 91

On October 9, 2025, pioneering mountaineer, skier, and avalanche educator Rob “Rod” Newcomb died of natural causes at age 91. Among the countless peaks he climbed and students he taught, his most lasting impact began in 1974, when he founded the American Avalanche Institute (AAI) in Jackson Hole.

At the time, avalanche education in the United States was supplied by a single school. With numbers of backcountry enthusiasts growing by the day, Newcomb set out to change the field. What began as a few snowpits dug in the Tetons became the country’s leading avalanche-education institution, eventually teaching more than 30,000 students over three decades. To this day, AAI classes emphasize observation over dogma and judgement over formulas, giving students a practical foundation to analyze conditions in real time.

Long before AAI, Newcomb was a kid from California who couldn’t shake the pull of the Tetons. He first came to Jackson Hole in the summer of 1953 for a job with the Grand Teton Lodge Company. The next year, he summited the Grand Teton (13,775 feet). He was hooked. Over the course of his guiding career, Newcomb would summit the Grand more than 400 times.

By 1959, he was spending winters in Jackson. He joined the ski patrol team at the newly constructed Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, taking on avalanche forecasting and control work as the ski scene exploded. Around the same time, he started guiding for Glenn Exum's operation, eventually moving up to co-owner of Exum Mountain Guides in 1978.

As the backcountry ski boom took hold in the 1970s, Newcomb’s AAI courses became the model for modern avalanche education. Based in Jackson Hole, he and his team combined emerging snow science with hard-earned field sense. Students didn’t just sit in classrooms, they dug pits, mapped layers, and learned to listen to the snow.

Newcomb’s teachings spread far beyond the Tetons. His graduates went on to lead ski patrols, start guide services, and establish their own avalanche courses across the country. The ripples of his work can be traced through nearly every major avalanche-education program in North America today.

Rod Newcomb is survived by his wife Anne, daughters Lisa and Maria, son Mark, and four grandchildren, not to mention the vast extended family of students, guides, and patrollers whose work carries his imprint.

In Jackson Hole, his presence endures in every avalanche forecast, every dawn patrol skintrack, and every quiet decision to turn around.

Rod Newcomb didn’t just climb mountains. He taught us how to understand them. The Grand Teton will feel a little emptier without him, but far safer because of him.