Customer Reviews

The Avalanche Handbook

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For backcountry enthusiasts with a science background, this book provides a thorough introduction to avalanche theory. The book is divided into chapters which build a solid foundation (weather systems, snow structure) through snowpack basics (snow strength and deformation, snowpack structure) and well into more advanced concepts (snowpack analysis, avalanche prediction, search and rescue, and even control with explosives, etc.) It is an excellent, if heavy, read and I found it a valuable resource in the development of an intro avalanche course.

If you have a significant interest in Avalanche science and theory, or are going to take an avalanche course this is the book for you. If you are looking to create advanced Avy skills and/or to become an Avy professional though this is the definative resource on Avalanches. It is required reading for most courses (starting with avy 1).

I believe that for most recreational readers this book does at times get "heavy". Its easy to lose interest in this book from time to time as the science overcomes the practical. If you are a weekend backcountry traveler and are looking for a book that will keep your attention and teach you how to travel safely in Avy terrain this book is probably a little much. Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain by Bruce Tremper is a much easier read and has all the most important information from this book. Combined with Snow Sense by Doug Fesler the two books are much more digestible for the average reader and a lot more fun as well.

There is a lot of information in this book, and it's certainly a must have for anyone who wants to be able to make their own decisions about travel in avalanche terrain. That said I think the book fails in two important ways. It fails at explaining the current state of the science behind avalanches, and it fails at giving end users a systematic way to utilize data from snow instability tests.

We get bits and pieces of the science behind avalanches but at a very superficial level. You learn something about the sorts of things scientists think about avalanches without learning the why and wherefore of it. The authors' reluctance to inlude anything that even smells of math turns the science sections into collections of things one might say about avalanche science at a dinner party, but otherwise not very useful when it comes to applying the science to avalanches.
When it comes time for the book to lay out a paradigm for making decisions in avalanche country, we find a confusing mess of very abstract decision schema. Nowhere do we find any specific guidance in using instability tests or snowpack profiles in making decisions. This lack of guidance is exacerbated by the skeptical stance the book takes towards stability tests. We are counseled to pay attention to local conditions, but we are also told that if our tests show a stable snowpack they should be discounted. It's not clear how stability tests could ever yield anything other than a no-go decision given that sort of paradigm, and the book needs to do more to explain how to navigate the grey zone if it to be useful as a handbook for making decisions.
So while this is an indispensable book, it could really use more work, and anyone wanting to understand the contents should probably be ready to dig into the nuts and bolts of the underlying science a bit more using other resources.

I'm preparing to begin backcountry skiing this upcoming winter and thought this book would be a good place to start learning about avalanche safety. Sadly, the book is almost useless for the backcountry traveller. In fact, I can't imagine the audience for which it would actually be useful. On the one hand much of the book has no application for the backcountry skier - for instance the chapter on engineering structures to protect alpine roads and buildings. On the other hand the information in that chapter is obviously too basic to be of any use to an actual engineer. The subjects that WOULD actually be useful for the backcountry skier - such as snow science, meteorology and avalanche rescue are discussed more from the perspective of professionals within those areas. Again, the information tends to be too detailed for the recreational skier and too general for the professional. For instance, the section on avalanche rescue spends a lot of time discussing the subject from the point of view of a professional rescue team - how to organize a chain of command, how to deploy 1st, 2nd and 3rd rescue parties, how to use dogs. Not much use for a small group of skiers, but probably too superficial for actual professionals. I don't want to give the impression that the book is useless, for instance there's an appendix to Chapter 4 that gives some helpful rules of thumb for avalanche forecasting, but one has to wade through a lot of irrelevant material for that information.

As a reviewer said: the science sounds like something one may say "at a dinner party". - It is well formulated: At first I was impressed by the book, and I found interesting points in it. But when trying to use it as extra literature when reading some micro-meteorology I got deeper into the text; and what looked interesting (or impressive) turned out to become frustrating and embarrassing. In the chapters about heat transfer, radiation and other physical processes in snow there were frequent subsentences and parenthesis that at first seemed to be there to explain or clarify things, but my spontaneous thought when reaching them was "What?! But that is two different things.", or "But that's not right."
After a while I recognized whole subsentences, or even whole sentences, that seemed to have no other reason to be there than to impress and dazzle the reader. It really looked like someone that felt himself undereducated trying to compensate by putting in technical termology that sounds right, or just simple five or six syllable words like "anisotropic" to impress, rather than clarify. As an academician that also ski and move around a lot in avalanche terrain I felt outright embarrassed. Is the style of the text deliberately chosen to dazzle and then scare away the reader? (I was so tired after a couple of hours of studying the text for the good stuff, while navigating around the weird parts that I really had to sit down and relax with a pure scientific paper about snow by Karl W. Birkeland.) - There is lot of good stuff in this book, but it shouldn't be put in such high regard for it's "science" as most readers and reviewers seem to do. The science seems to end up "not right" too often. Where the author would have been completely right without the frequent attempts to be over-precise. Never wrong, but too often "not right". It isn't the science that makes the text heavy, it's the urge to be eloquent that do it. - A better book with regards to readability, but perhaps also with regards to the science, is Bruce Tremper's "Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrrain", and clear well written pieces can also be found in books like "Field Guide to Snow Crystals" by Edward R LaChapelle. - I expect to find more good stuff in this book, but it is really not indispensable unless it is your job to release controlled avalanches. The backcountry traveler and the pure academically interested will find better texts out there.

This is a great book that covers all the aspects required to understand avalanche safety and the elements of knowing what areas will avalanche. Great book!

This handbook is a comprehensive compilation of the state of current science regarding the snow avalanche phenomenon. Required reading for most level 2 avalanche courses, and highly recommended for casual backcountry users, this book really excels in the figures and diagrams included. Be warned, however, that the material is rather dense - not really a sunday read...

Every winter we hear of people who have become the victim of an avalanche while skiing, snowmobiling, or camping in mountainous country where a landslide of snow roars down off a mountain side faster than anyone can move out of its way. Co-authored by David McClung (a professor in the Department of Geography and leader of the avalanche research group at the University of British Columbia) and Peter Schaerer (a senior research officer and head of the Avalanche Research Center of the National Research Council of Canada), "The Avalanche Handbook" is now published and available in a newly updated and expanded third edition that includes all the latest information, techniques, and research on understanding the nature of avalanches, as well as how to avoid and/or survive encounters with them. Readers will learn about the character and effects of avalanches, snow formations, snowpack analysis; the use of multiple transceivers along with other search and rescue techniques and equipment; the elements of avalanche forecasting, backcountry forecasting, and the decision-making process with respect to assessing avalanche possibilities; snow slap instability, terrain variables, skier triggering of avalanches, and the nature of avalanche motion. The informative and thoroughly 'reader friendly' text is superbly organized and nicely illustrated making "The Avalanche Handbook" essential and very strongly recommended reading for anyone venturing into mountain country in winter.