How risky is ski cutting by avalanche practitioners?
Highlights of a paper on the risk of ski cutting by Bruce Jamieson, Karl Birkeland, Mark Vesely, Ilya Storm, John Stimberis.
How do snow avalanches differ from other slope hazards?
By understanding the differences between snow avalanches and other slope hazards, the authors of Planning Methods for Assessing and Mitigating Snow Avalanche Risk hopefully made it accessible to specialists who plan for other slope hazards.
Managing uncertainty in avalanche operations
Although intended for avalanche operations, some backcountry recreationists may also find this video useful.
Backcountry Avalanche Awareness - now an updated e-book
Promo for the new e-book edition of Backcountry Avalanche Awareness (36 seconds).
Solar induced dry slab avalanches
A video for advanced recreationsts and avalanche practitioners about a poorly understood phenomenon that has surprised - sometimes tragically - many experienced people in the backcountry.
Are infrared images of the pit wall useful for avalanche forecasting? For avalanche education?
A field experiment shows major limitations of IR images of the pit wall for avalanche forecasting. However, some images - including some free ones - are excellent for avalanche education.
An instructional video about the energy exchange at the snow surface and some of the persistent weak snowpack layers formed primarily by the energy exchange.
Bruce Jamieson, November 2017. Revised 31 December 2017.
CC by-nd
Ductile and brittle fracture of toffee (and snow is like toffee)
Simple illustrations of brittle and ductile fractures. Snow can fail and fracture in the same ways as toffee.
Crack propagation in human-triggered avalanches and snowpack tests
For a skier, snowmobiler or other load to trigger a slab avalanche: the dynamic load must start a crack in a weak snowpack layer and then crack propagation must be sustained away from the load.
There is no one paper that summarizes the ideas in this video, but you could start by searching for "simenhois fracture propagation" and read the short 2009 article.
Bruce Jamieson, 2016, CC by-nd.
This video presents the technical concepts behind the current theory for the spontaneous release of dry slab avalanches. There are a few questions and answers at the end for keeners. Bruce Jamieson and Juerg Schweizer, 2016, CC by-nd.