Eastern Snow and Avalanche Workshop November 11, 2017
Laura Hill Eastman Performing Arts Center – Fryeburg, Maine
The Eastern Snow and Avalanche Workshop is a one-day professional development seminar for people working in avalanche safety. It provides a venue for avalanche workers to listen to presentations and discuss new ideas, techniques and technologies with their colleagues. The meeting is intended for avalanche forecasters, ski guides, avalanche education instructors, ski patrollers, students, and researchers, but the meeting is open to anyone interested in furthering their knowledge of avalanche safety.
Proceeds from the Eastern Snow and Avalanche workshops benefit White Mountain Avalanche Education Foundation, a mechanism to help educate visitors before they arrive in the mountains.
2017 List of Speakers
We gather some of the great minds of snow science and avalanche forecasting to build on past concepts and stimulate new ideas to further our understanding of avalanches.
A little history of ESAW
Several years ago Kyle Tyler, as an avalanche educator, and Chris Joosen, as a forecaster, started talking about an idea to facilitate a seminar or workshop to promote continual learning about avalanches. Chris and Kyle had been participating in the International Snow Science Workshop around North America for almost 20 years and have substantially enjoyed its feel and philosophy. ISSW’s mantra, “The Merging of Theory with Practice”, looks to tap all minds for their snow related knowledge. They took this idea to friends and partners at the Mount Washington Volunteer Ski Patrol, made up of National Ski Patrollers, educators and rescuers, and the idea turned into reality. They worked together to make it happen and it’s been excited to watch it unfold.
As world-renowned chemist Raould Hoffmann once stated
The vast majority of great things come not in one flash of progress, but the accumulation of small things
That was the concept that ISSW started and many other smaller regional workshops continue every year. That is, to build on past concepts and stimulate new ideas to further our understanding of avalanches. We will always have lots to learn about snow, avalanches, and the natural world so we should never feel done, finished, or static about our need for higher education. There are no experts, we are all students.
See you at ESAW!
Christopher, Joe, Frank, Beth, and Blake
White Mountain Avalanche Education Foundation
Avalanche accidents and close calls over the past decade have shown we can do more to educate visitors before they arrive in the mountains.
The White Mountain Avalanche Education Foundation is used as a mechanism to reach this goal through avalanche awareness and education of the youth and wilderness rescuers of the White Mountain region and those visiting this unique landscape.
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