Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches - Paperback

by Jill Fredston (Author)

Every year around the globe, people cross paths with avalanches--some massive, some no deeper than a pizza box--with deadly results. Avalanche expert Jill Fredston stalks these so-called freaks of nature, forecasting where and when they will strike, deliberately triggering them with explosives, teaching potential victims how to stay alive, and leading rescue efforts when tragedy strikes.

In Snowstruck, Fredston draws on decades of personal experience to take "avalanches out of the statistical realm and into the human one" (Skiing Magazine): a skier making what may prove his final decision, a victim buried so tightly that he can't move a finger, rescuers racing both time and weather, forecasters treading the line between reasonable risk and danger. Fredston brings to life the awesome forces of nature that can turn the mountains deadly--and the equally inexo­rable forces of human nature that lure us time and again into treacherous terrain.

Front Jacket

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.
Having spent decades trying to keeping avalanches and people apart, Fredston has brought them together hauntingly in Snowstruck.

Back Jacket

Avalanches, as Jill Fredston makes vividly clear in Snowstruck, have their own lore, and they can chill even those of us far removed from their deadly trajectories. The New York Times Book Review
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.

"Gripping . . . while her thrilling, sometimes tragic, accounts of victims and rescuers alike keep the pages flying by, it's Fredston's larger preoccupation with humanity's need to flirt with danger that gives the book its overarching grandeur and heft." Elle.com
"[Fredston] is so adamant and impassioned a seer that we read on, grateful to look through her eyes." San Francisco Chronicle

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.
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