Every year around the globe, people cross paths with avalanches, often with devastating results. For more than two decades, Jill Fredston has grappled with the forces of nature that turn the mountains deadly—and the forces of human nature that lure us into treacherous terrain.
Jill Fredston stalks avalanches. She predicts where and when they will strike, deliberately triggers them with explosives, teaches potential victims how to stay alive, and leads rescue efforts when tragedy strikes. Reaching deep into this trove of personal experience, Fredston captures the overwhelming force of avalanches from a panorama of perspectives: a skier making what may prove his final decision, a victim buried so tightly that he can’t move a finger, rescuers racing time and weather, forecasters treading the line between reasonable risk and danger. Sweeping us into these stories, she also captures the mercurial fascination of snow itself, which first drew her to Alaska and then led her to the man who would become her lifelong partner in love and work.
JILL FREDSTON is the author of Rowing to Latitude: Journeys Along the Arctic’s Edge, which won the 2002 National Outdoor Book Award for Literature. She and her husband, Doug Fesler, codirect the Alaska Mountain Safety Center and cowrote the authoritative Snow Sense: A Guide to Evaluating Snow Avalanche Hazard. They live in the mountains above Anchorage.
