The Avalanche Hour Podcast Stronger Together: Building Intuitive Expertise Where Mountain Miles Meet Mental Miles
Science and experience-built intuition are a composite - they are stronger together than they are separate, especially when we start to see things that we have never seen before.
Join Gabrielle Antonioli and Karl Birkeland for an expansive conversation on the critical factors we weigh each day: uncertainty, decision-making scales, and a reflective discussion on how we are strongest when we embrace both sides of the avalanche industry. A snow scientist might not make the best guide if they only stay in the lab but field practitioners need a cross-referenced resource to better face & understand an increasingly dynamic and variable snowpack/climate where outliers are increasingly becoming the new normal. These thoughts are what prompted Karl to write The Starting Zone Book for practitioners, scientists, and everyone in between.
Conversation Highlights:
- There is uncertainty in all of our assessments, but as we better understand the science behind avalanche mechanics, we can better understand the uncertainty that remains in our assessments required to make decisions in avalanche terrain.
- Science is having a structured process for your curiosity
- Be a super-forecaster: comfortable with uncertainty and always looking to disprove your hypothesis
- Use your intuition to tell you the snowpack is unstable - collect information that disproves your hypothesis.
- Effect of temperature on dry-slab avalanche mechanics. Assumption: warmth = more reactivity? Not necessarily.
About our host and guest:
Gabrielle Antonioli is the current director of the Payette Avalanche Center. Her career started with simply being a curious and avid backcountry traveler—and by asking plenty of questions to Karl Birkeland and the forecasters at the GNFAC. She began as an intern at the GNFAC, and rooted a career in teaching recreational and professional avalanche education courses while completing coursework for an MS in snow science. Following that thread of curiosity and interest in snow expanded to forecasting for the Going-to-the-Sun Road, the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center, and brought her to her current position. She also manages the A3 Resilience Project.
Karl Birkeland has worked with snow and avalanches for the past 45 years, including as a ski patroller, backcountry avalanche forecaster, avalanche researcher, and as the Director of the Forest Service's National Avalanche Center. After retiring from the Forest Service three years ago he set out to - in the words of a friend - ruin a perfectly good retirement by creating an electronic resource for avalanche professionals. Karl has been recognized by his peers with the American Avalanche Association's Bernie Kingery (2008) and Honorary Membership (2024) Awards.
Resources mentioned in the interview:
Conditions for Intuitive Expertise: A Failure to Disagree (Kahneman and Klein)
The Fundamental Processes in Conventional Avalanche Forecasting (Ed LaChapelle)
Scaling Issues in Snow Hydrology (Gunter Bloschl)
The Starting Zone - By Karl Birkeland
Thanks to the sponsors of the show.
Legacy Sponsors:
Darren Johnson Avalanche Education Memorial Fund
Partner Sponsors:
Episode Sponsor:
Music: Ketsa
Artwork: Mike Tea
Production: Caleb Merrill, Bob Keating