Operations

We returned a veteran SAC staff this season— including Scott as Director and Ethan, Chris, and Ben as Avalanche Forecasters. We spent the fall wrapping up website projects, maintaining weather stations, attending and presenting at regional snow and avalanche workshops (held virtually again this year), preparing education materials, dialing in the snowmobiles, and installing the beacon park.

Once the winter gets rolling, we aim to have at least one forecaster in the field every day of the week. This season, we logged 209 field days for an average of two forecasters per day. Of these field days, 87% involved time on skis, and 20% included snowmobiles. We received 250 observations from the public— thank you! Local ski guides, snow safety workers, and USFS staff contributed 344 observations to our professional observations database. We owe a huge thank you to Boise State University and the guides at Sawtooth Mountain Guides, Soldier Mountain Cat Skiing, Sun Valley Guides, Sun Valley Heli Ski, and Sun Valley Trekking, as well as the ski patrols at Sun Valley and Soldier Mountain. All told, we logged nearly 800 observations this season.

In addition to field and office time related to producing the daily Backcountry Avalanche Forecasts, SAC staff produced a variety of print and social media content, taught avalanche education programs, maintained and repaired weather stations, and plugged away on local and national-level projects with over 60 partner organizations.