Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 15
 Perfect companion to a level 1 Avy class October 8, 2009
Ben (New York, NY United States)
This is a phenomenal book. Clear, engaging, accessible, and thorough. Tremper helps you understand the science of avalanches, points out the key takeaways, and gives you decision-making criteria that statistics support. Written with a touch of humor to keep you on your toes if you're not a meteorologist. His first-hand experiences give this book all the street cred it needs, and then some.
I'm glad I waited till after my three day avy class to read this because it helps a lot to have been in a snow pit, seen a fracture line, and learned the basic foundations already- it was still somewhat tangible when I began reading. That said, this book is the absolute necessary second half to that field education. I intend to reread it or reread my highlighted notes before every season.
excellent technical text August 15, 2009
Chris Williams (Australia)
Only up to page 128 the moment, but I find this to be an excellent text. One potential drawback, for those of us in the southern hemishpere (i'm in Australia), beginners like me are not too sure of its relevance here or in New Zealand, where I imagine the climates are vastly different to that of Canada and the US.
In depth book June 23, 2009
Jameson B. Schwab (Bay Area, California)
I took my Avy course 3 years ago, and before heading to the alps this past winter, bought this book to refresh.
it is very well written, and brought back to memory everything I had learned in my course.
Worth every penny.
Stay Alive March 5, 2009
Matthew Gunn
If you want to know how avalanches happen, why they happen, and steps to avoid them, then this is the book. It won't make you an expert, but it will give you a solid foundation for future avalanche courses/education and also let you know what you don't know.
The same slope could be perfectly safe one day, a death trap the next, or ambiguously in between. If you use the back country, it's worth it to know what's going on.
Also, the author, Bruce Tremper & Utah Avalanche Center, has a channel on Youtube with some interesting stuff.
Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain February 16, 2009
Eric Jain (Seattle, WA USA)
This book cleared up a lot of misconceptions I had about avalanches (most likely triggers, survivability etc). I expected a somewhat tedious book full of tables, but it turned out to be quite readable and easy to understand.
While the book does give you some quick checklists, it also presses home the point that evaluating avalanche risks reliably requires years of experience (and even then can fail you), so you definitely can't accuse the author of leaving you with a false sense of security.
Part of the book was a bit too detailed for me (e.g. a dozen different ways to test snow stability), though it might be handy when doing a practical course (which this book obviously does not replace).
Throughout the book there are great pictures, some of them chilling. I'd have liked to see more pictures (e.g. terrain examples, snow crystals) and in better print quality, even if that had increased the cost of the book a bit.
I'm not an expert, and this is the only book I've read on the topic, so I can't judge the accuracy of this book. However the list of reviewers in the acknowledgments section looks like a who's who of avalanche research, so I'm reasonably confident that the information in this book does represent the current knowledge accurately.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 15
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