The 810 snow experts who came to Telluride last week from around the globe weren’t there to enjoy the delights of snow in a mountain ski resort. Instead, they came to be buried under a blizzard of snow research.
The attendees from 16 countries, including Namibia, New Zealand, Japan and Switzerland, came to study up on 4 pounds, 13.1 ounces of technical knowledge contained in scientific reports detailing all the intricacies of hoar frost, velocities, avalanche hazard mapping and more than 150 other snow-related topics.
The International Snow Science Workshop brought together snow experts ranging from university researchers and authors to ski patrollers, avalanche forecasters and highway workers. A group of high school girls from Wyoming even came to present a class-project study on the effects of dust and snow fences on snow.
The conference – the first to be held in the United States since Breckenridge hosted the event in 1992 – contained so much snow wisdom that many snow treatises had to be displayed in poster form rather than presented in the 65 talks before the groups in Telluride and Mountain Village.
The workshop also included field trips, including one across the San Juan Mountains to Red Mountain Pass. With 140 avalanche paths capable of reaching U.S. 550 where it snakes through the mountains from Ouray to Durango, it is the most avalanche- prone highway in the country and a great outdoor classroom for a snow conference, according to workshop organizer Craig Sterbenz, the director of snow safety at Telluride Ski Area.
Andy Gleason, the snow conference chairman of papers who was responsible for reading all 1,000 pages of the reports, said even old snow hands learned something new at this conference.
Gleason said one of the more surprising findings was revealed in a paper showing that slopes that already have fractured are not as safe as previously thought. Gleason said snow experts came away looking forward to a new “White Risk” CD being put together for avalanche educators by the Swiss Federal Institute of Snow and Avalanche Research.
But one of the top gee-whiz moments of the conference came compliments of a team of Japanese researchers.
Gleason said the Japanese demonstrated how they can make snow crystals in a laboratory. Unlike the snow pellets spewed out by snowmaking machines on ski slopes, the Japanese device makes crystals as they are found in nature so the mechanical properties of snow can be studied in a laboratory setting.
“It was really cool,” Gleason said. “They showed us a little snowstorm in a lab.”
Learn more — To check out more of the workshop snow topics, go to www.issworkshop.org.
Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.
