A couple years ago, a trip with five Québécois finally came together. On the first day we did a thorough trip plan and a trailhead check, we practiced avalanche rescue, and we started touring up from Turnagain Pass. The avalanche danger was at moderate for a persistent slab that was buried ten days earlier. The weak layer had shown no propagation or avalanches in over a week. But like the forecasters, I still did not trust the snowpack. As we toured, we dug a quick pit at 2,000 feet and another at 3,500 feet, but found no propagation. I couldn’t even find a weak layer. We continued climbing to the ridge, spreading out and spotting each other up the last steeper section.

From the ridge I skied the slope first, making several ski cuts across the top short section of avalanche terrain before skiing a long, low angle powder run to beyond the runout. The next four skied, all experiencing the Alaska run of their dreams. The last person dropped into the slope and it avalanched, releasing about two feet deep and 200 feet across. He rode it 600 feet down, staying on the surface, and came to a gentle stop near us.

The 25-degree slope where most of the slab released.

A client of mine was avalanched. That’s a rough dose for a backcountry ski guide. We talked and debriefed about the avalanche at length. To the clients it appeared I did everything right. We skied together another nine days. It was easy to enjoy monster days of mellow powder skiing after the avalanche.

Of course I kept thinking about the avalanche. I’ve been studying avalanches my whole life, and now this happens. I came up with seven reminders of what I could have done better.

Take time with clients to include a thorough briefing, trailhead checks, rescue practice, and pits.
Be meticulous in pits.
Surface hoar may not be visible on pit walls.
Surface hoar avalanches move fast and on low angle slopes.
Ask if am I pushing it for me, or for the clients? Both should be low priority.
Always ski cut toward an escape zone.
Good runouts are the difference between a ride and death.

But the main thing I thought was, “Wow! This is why I love avalanches!” Nobody was hurt, and now I get to learn a bunch.

I first heard about avalanches as a little kid when my dad took me backcountry skiing in the Wallowa Mountains in Oregon. He had a bunch of graduate students that were into backcountry skiing. As we toured into the Wallowas, I asked Dad what I was carrying in my pack and he said, “Your moon boots.” We made tele turns, that were mostly face plants, with long wooden skis and three pins. It took me 18 years to fix the heel and fix that problem. We practiced with Ramer avalanche beacons and ear pieces. One of Dad’s students gave an evening lecture on avalanche safety. Later in the trip, up through the trees, I heard an avalanche rumble down the mountain. I was hooked.

Joe and Dave Stock in the Wallowas, Oregon.

I did my first avalanche project in sixth grade. I made a poster copied from a second edition of The Freedom of the Hills that showed a wise route going up through thick forest, and “NEVER!” written across the nice open ski terrain. I did every project in college and graduate school on avalanches. I was so lucky to have mentors like Karl Birkeland and Denny Hogan. Last spring I caught up with Denny at his home in Colorado. Denny has worked every job possible with avalanches. Denny showed me humility. He said you can’t be an avalanche expert because they are too complex. He also told me his wife always had his gravestone planned out. It would’ve read, “Should have known better.”

Denny Hogan at Independence Pass near his home in Buena Vista, Colorado.

My relationship with avalanches has gone up and down over the years. I grew up with parents who were science professors, so naturally I gravitated toward snow and avalanche research. I spent years head down bum up in snowpits. Then I didn’t dig a pit for ten years.

Working as a mountain guide I’ve felt like the doors have been wide open. I was taught the mountain guiding techniques, and then the constant message was, “Go for it. Guide anything you want.”

In the avalanche world, like in mountain guiding, I’ve also had many opportunities. I’ve also been told No many times. No, you’re wrong. No, you can’t do that. No, you can’t say that. I’ve often wondered why this is. Maybe it’s because avalanches are not well understood and often not tangible. You often can’t put your hands on this unseeable danger that lingers under powder. The lack of tangible evidence brings about a different ethos. It’s like some people feel they truly understand snow, and how it should be treated, and therefore they know the rules, and that Joe should be following those rules.

Mountain guiding is much different. The mountain guiding problems are well-understood and tangible. For example, consider the Grand Couloir on the easiest route up Mont Blanc. Some guides won’t guide this route because of the rockfall. Other guides are up there every three days. There’s differences in opinion, but that’s okay because it’s an obvious danger. Everyone is allowed to think about it how they like.

Looking down the Grand Couloir from the old Gouter Refuge on Mont Blanc. 2,000 feet of loose and falling rocks.

But maybe the real reason I’ve been told no many times in the avalanche world is because I’m a rogue. I think differently. I’ve never had a television. My childhood past time was digging holes in the Eastern Washington dirt. I’m bewildered by social media. Some people wonder if I grew up in a cave.

Molly gardening in the rocks in El Chalten, Patagonia. One winter, Cathy and I met my Mom and Dad in El Chalten. Mom realized it was her place. She loves the mountains, the volatile weather, the gauchos, and the climbers. She’s been spending winters down there now for 15 years.

I definitely got the rogue gene from my mom. She’s a hyper passionate and obsessive person and fed those traits to me. She taught me that being passionate and obsessed are essential for living a full life. To her my obsessions were normal. Another parent would have had me heavily medicated.

Now I’m so grateful to be a rogue. I realize that great things get done by the rogues I look up to. J Harlen Bretz didn’t discover the great floods of the Inland Northwest where I grew up by committee. Darwin didn’t get consensus before publishing The Origin of Species. Alfred Wegener proposed plate tectonics because he didn’t follow the rules, and was a rogue. I now realize that being a rogue means the avalanche world is wide open. Just like the mountain guiding world. Anything is possible. I can still make conservative avalanche decisions, but my avalanche thinking is going further out there as I strive to get closer to the truth.

J Harlen Brentz who realized the Scablands of Eastern Washington, near where I grew up, originated from ice age floods. He spent years studying this landscape and 40 years defending his theory until it was finally accepted. He wrote, "Ideas without precedent are generally looked upon with disfavor and men are shocked if their conceptions of an orderly world are challenged."

Now I love improving my avalanche knowledge through teaching and ski guiding. Teaching avalanche courses with Nick and Elliot and fine-turning our Alaska Guide Collective curriculum has been a blast. I love the challenge of teaching students how to deal with this intangible problem. How do I teach students to make smart, data-driven decisions, when mine are mostly made through intuition?

By comparison, teaching rock, ice and mountain climbing are a no brainer. Thwack your tools like this and don’t fall off. Climb the crack like so. Backup your rappel these 10 ways.

I also love using avalanche knowledge when ski guiding in remote Alaska. I’m not out there managing risk. I’m managing avalanche uncertainty. That’s about the coolest thing in the world. I love the cerebral game of making avalanche decisions, with a bunch of clients waiting for me to voice my intuition. Sometimes I feel like yelling out “Wait! Don’t trust me! There is too much uncertainty to trust me!”

At the top of our first run of the trip in the Alaska Range last spring. We remote triggered this slope as we skinned up to our first run. That reduces uncertainty, but now where do we ski?

My latest avalanche obsession was writing a book about avoiding them. I wanted to know more. I wanted to take my avalanche knowledge to the next level. I’ve wanted to write an avalanche safety book for years, and I finally felt ready.

I started writing The Avalanche Factor in 2019. It took a full year to get it all down. Then a year of revising. Then two more years of collecting edits from anyone that would read it. Turns out it’s the world’s most confusing topic. How do you make a logical progression without red flags being a non-sequitur? What do you say about snow temperature? And how about the human factor? I do know that my human factor is pegged at red most of the time, so who am I to say? I learned that the more you know about human factor the better you are at justifying your stupid decisions. I also learned that the trick to reducing the human factor, and making better decisions, comes down to the tools you use to reduce it. Tools like slowing down, cultivating good partners, and using a system.

To get The Avalanche Factor done in four years meant any day I wasn’t up to guide at 5am, I be up to write. It was so much fun. That’s the thing about being obsessed and passionate. It’s really fun. It makes for a great life and I feel so lucky. It’s nice to have the first edition of the Avalanche Factor finished, but I miss the process. It’s like pulling off a big mountain trip. It feels great to have it done, but the anticipation of the trip, and the trip itself, are what the obsessed live for.

After writing The Avalanche Factor I do feel like I’ve taken my knowledge to the next level. I’m not an avalanche expert, because, like Denny told me, that’s not possible. But I do know way more. And I’m dying to keep learning. So please, let me know what you think about the book. I love getting critical feedback. And it will all be fed into the next edition.

Also while writing The Avalanche Factor I realized that avalanche education is a vast and wild frontier. We know that avalanche education is working, because the annual death rate has flat-lined, but there’s a better way. It needs a macro-dose of Psilocybin. A new way of teaching avalanche avoidance is waiting for us. Seeking that better way to avoid avalanches will keep me obsessed for a couple more decades. That and my wife Cathy.