The Dangerous Job of Avalanche Control in the Utah Ski Country, with Author and Journalist Ed Power

Lisa Belisle: Hello, I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to, or watching, Radio Maine. Today I have with me in the studio author and journalist Ed Power. Thanks for coming in today.

Ed Power: Thank you for inviting me.

Lisa Belisle: So you and I have a lot of things we could potentially talk about. We share a love of the outdoors, a love of skiing, for example, the ocean, writing actually. But I want to start with this book that I've been reading of yours, which is Dragons in the Snow. It's got a very specific topic and I'm wondering if you would tell us a little bit more about the topic and what it was that got you interested in writing about it.

Ed Power: Sure. Well, I was a journalist for many years, worked for two big newspapers, the Virginian-Pilot, Virginia's largest paper, and also the Philadelphia Inquirer. And I was an editor and then I became a publisher. So I had this deep background in writing and editing. And in January 2016, my wife Marguerite and I moved to Utah. We had had careers in Virginia and our kids had grown up and left the area. And we had built a home in Utah in 2004 because we're big skiers. We love skiing. And we've been going out there for many years. So we moved there and we proceeded to buy season passes and sort of became ski bums. And I would get up every morning and go out on the front porch to test the weather and get a sense of things.

And overlooking our home, up at 5,500 feet overlooking a valley, I hear these echoes of bombing going on in the mountains, avalanche control work. And I'd heard it before, but not as much because I was living there full-time now, and my journalist curiosity got the best of me. And I thought, what's this like? I mean, who are the people that do this work? How dangerous is it? And what do I need to know about it, since I'm spending so much time up in the mountains? And I resolved to take an avalanche awareness course, which I did, and I met a guy named Craig Gordon who was teaching it. He's a very well known avalanche forecaster in the Salt Lake area and does a lot on the local TV networks there about avalanche control and what the conditions are like.

And I told him about my background and I said, what you do is really interesting and I'd be interested in writing something about it. I said, there could even be a book here. That's a different kind of beast, but let's get together and see. And the more I talked to him, the more I thought, I think there is a book here. And so that got me on a three year journey following Craig and what he does in the winters and meeting a lot of the snow professionals who work in the mountains around the Salt Lake area, and up in the Uinta range there in the Wasatch. So yes, that's what led to the book. It came out in September 2020.

Lisa Belisle: So as I'm reading this, I was immediately drawn in because you're describing people who are actually in an avalanche and fortunately survived. One of them ended up with pretty significant trauma and ended up needing to rehab for quite a while. The other one was sort of dug out from underneath the snow. And it really put me in that place, having been a skier for a long time, of what it would actually feel like to have just tons of snow on top of my body. It's a very extreme living space, I think, to be willing to put yourself in that place.

Ed Power: Well, no question. I really came to know a number of these snow professionals, as I call them, people who do this work and who do the rescue work as well. And that's what Craig hopes to do when he's out in the mountains and learns there's been an avalanche, but usually he's brought in after the fact to investigate what happened. But there are lots of rescue operations that go on up in the mountains, and these people are risking their lives to try to save other people's lives. And after the book came out, about a year ago, we had a bad accident, and four young people died in an avalanche up in the area where there's two big canyons, Little Cottonwood and Big Cottonwood Canyon that are right outside of Salt Lake, and they died up in a particular area in there. And it's tragic, and when these things happen, the whole community in Salt Lake City obviously learns about it and grieves over it, because these people spend a lot of time in the mountains and they love the mountains. And sometimes nature turns on you, and you've got to be careful and you've got to know what you're doing up there.

Lisa Belisle: It's interesting also to hear the weaving together of nature and technology, where some of the things that are being used, I think there's some sort of a beacon device that people wear so that if something happens to them, then people can follow that signal and find them underneath the snow. And also when people are doing these reports that go out all over the area about the potential for avalanches and the significance of the weather, that's drawing from data that's really only become available recently, but we're still talking about something very elemental. We're still talking about nature that we certainly can't control. Did that ever strike you, as you were going through all of this, that it's that continual interplay between what we can and cannot have an impact over?

Ed Power: Definitely. And there have been efforts to develop the technology to protect people. You mentioned the avalanche beacon. Those have been around for a long time, but more recently these airbags have been developed. They're like backpacks and they have an inflatable bag that you can pull with a rip cord kind of a thing, and they inflate. And the deal is, if you're caught in an avalanche, it protects your head from getting hit by a tree or rocks or what have you. But it also makes you a larger thing. And there's this physics principle of larger things that are in moving material getting pushed to the surface. And so they've invented these airbags and they're used actually by backcountry skiers quite a bit these days. And in the book, I actually went and spent time with these engineers at a company called Black Diamond that's headquartered in Salt Lake City, and learned about how they had developed this particular airbag.

And when I went, I thought, these guys are engineers, they could be kind of like a lot of science speak, maybe not that interesting. And it turned out fascinating. These guys were just amazing people, and the way they had developed this airbag, it was both very serious, but also sometimes very funny, because they got put in situations that were so odd in trying to develop this bag and test it and how they did it. So it was a great story. It turned out actually as a chapter in the book.

Lisa Belisle: Does this happen to you a lot, where you become interested in something and then you just follow it to see where it goes?

Ed Power: I think that's what journalists do. They have a natural curiosity that becomes well honed over time, because you engage in the practice of journalism and you learn all the traditional ways of exercising that judgment, that insight. You have to become kind of a semi-expert in lots of things when you embark on a particular story. And in this particular case, I immersed myself in this world that existed, and I didn't know how wide it was. I didn't know how deep it was. I didn't know what the characters would be like. And fortunately there was all of that, as it turned out to be. And so I really loved getting to know these people. I loved understanding what they do for a living, what sacrifices they make in both their lifestyles and their professions. And so it was a great subject for a book, as it turned out.

Lisa Belisle: Tell me about the title Dragons in the Snow.

Ed Power: So I went to this avalanche awareness course. That first night was in a classroom. It was four hours in a classroom with Craig Gordon. And then we did a day on the mountain, doing things like digging snow pits and understanding why different layers of snow, what they look like and why you should be concerned about them if you see certain things. But he mentioned that night the dragon. It's something that these professionals who do this work, how they refer to the avalanches. The dragon comes calling. And so it caught my attention right away. The language caught my attention and I thought, okay, if I was going to write a magazine piece or a book, there's some title in that.

And so I jotted it down that night, and then I carried it out, Avalanche Detectives and the Race to Beat Death in the Mountains. And they really are like detectives. There's this analogy to the CSI investigators, because they bring all these modern, contemporary types of gear and equipment to the site of an avalanche, drones, and they dig snow pits and they measure things to understand why this particular avalanche happened, what caused it, and to understand what's in the layers of snow, which then helps them forecast potentially other avalanches and put those reports out so that backcountry skiers can understand where not to go and what to look for, that could be warning signs.

Lisa Belisle: What is the crossover between your love of skiing and your love of sailing and surfing and the non-frozen water that you and I live near here on the coast of Maine?

Ed Power: I think partly it comes from wanting to be out in nature. I've always loved the water. I grew up in southeastern Virginia by the ocean, the Atlantic Ocean in Virginia Beach. And as you said, I became a surfer there because I was a swimmer when I was young, a competitive swimmer, and I loved the water. I think there is, frankly, in all these things, a bit of risk. I did some big boat sailing at one time and did some passages from the Caribbean up to New England and stopping in Bermuda. And obviously skiing in these big mountains is part of that. I've skied in France and Switzerland and surfed all over the world.

And there's risk there, and I touch on it in the book certainly, about people who go ski in the backcountry, because there's just inherent danger there. There just is. And you have to go knowing that. You have to prepare yourself as best you can with the training and the equipment, the avalanche beacon, probe, pole, shovel, those sorts of things. And people still engage in it because they love being out in the purity of that kind of nature. And also because they like the rush of it. And there is that factor that you just have to own up to, that you like that kind of thing. And not everybody does.

Lisa Belisle: So it sounds like you might be one of those people.

Ed Power: I guess so, since I've engaged in all these things for so long now, because I started surfing when I was nine, and that was a long time ago. And sailing, as a kid I started sailing sunfishes on the Chesapeake Bay and kind of graduated to bigger boats and racing. But fortunately I also developed writing skills as a journalist and studied writing at the University of Virginia and Columbia University. And I was able to leverage those skills in bringing to other people the book and hopefully communicate to them something about what that life is like and who those people are. And certainly the book got recognition. My publisher, Mountaineers Books in Seattle, submitted it for the National Outdoor Book Award, and the book won for Outdoor Literature in November 2020.

And so that was, I think, recognition that I had done a pretty good job trying to communicate what I saw, what I felt, what I heard from people. And I think it gave all these snow professionals a chance to get recognized for the work that they do, because it's long hours, often very early in the morning, in the dark, going up there with explosives and bombing and all the things that they do to make sure that it's as safe as it can be for people like you and me who show up to just ski for a day. And so I gave them some recognition and I felt really good about that.

Lisa Belisle: Tell me how you got into writing. What is it about writing that appealed to you?

Ed Power: As a kid, I was a big reader. I loved stories. I loved going on the journey of a story, a good book. And I was writing in high school even. But when I got to the University of Virginia, my parents wanted me to pursue a medical degree of some kind, to become a doctor. And after one semester of chemistry, I said, I don't think this is going to work. What I really want to do is be an English major. And so I ended up studying writing at UVA and got a bachelor's and master's degree in American literature and writing. And then I had a fellowship at Columbia University for a year as a writing fellow in the School of the Arts. And it's funny, because I didn't really plan to become a newspaper journalist, I just thought that I would go off and write books.

But I ended up back in Virginia and my wife had gotten a job teaching at a university, and I thought, I've got to get a job, and where would I go to be a writer, the newspaper? So I started doing work for the newspaper there, and within a couple months, they hired me as a staff writer. And so I did that for five years. And then the Philadelphia Inquirer had seen some of my work and came calling and offered me a job, and that was a great place to work. I worked with some of the best journalists in the country. My desk mate was a guy who wrote Black Hawk Down. And across the aisle was Buzz Bissinger, who wrote Friday Night Lights. And so these guys were at the top of their game, and I learned a lot from them. And so that's how it evolved in terms of the writing. And when I became an editor and later a publisher, I loved those jobs, but I did miss the writing. And I told myself that someday I'd get back to it. And so fortunately I was able to do that.

Lisa Belisle: So the publishing side of things is actually very different from the editing and writing side of things.

Ed Power: It is. It's a business. And so I had been an editor, which is a management job, at least it was for me. I had a number of reporters that worked under me. And at some point I got to know the folks in the corporate side of the business. It's a big company, a newspaper company and a media company. This company in particular, Landmark Communications, owned three CBS TV stations and some other media properties. And I got to know the people on the corporate side, and at some point they came to me and said, we're looking for a guy to run a company for us. Would you be interested in that? And I thought, well, could be an interesting way to go. And so for 16 years, I ran a media company, had a couple of hundred employees, and it was great.

I loved working with all the young journalists and graphic designers. I got to know the sales managers and the salespeople, of course, who were selling advertising. And so it was fascinating to me. As a journalist, I've always been interested in other walks of life. And I also had been a business editor for a while. I had done that as I was learning more about the wider newspaper world, the different types of specialized journalism. Of course, there's sports and business, et cetera. And so I had done a stint as a business editor, so I'd learned a fair amount with that. So I really enjoyed it, but I did miss the writing, I have to say.

Lisa Belisle: So I think what I'm enjoying about this conversation is that it can be very challenging at times to be over on the publishing side if you also have loyalty to the writing side, to the craft, because in the time that I spent working in media, your audience is even just a little bit different. If you're a writer, you're writing for the people who read, but if you're a publisher, you know that the product actually also has to appeal to people who will pay for the product. And you don't make money off of subscriptions. Maybe that's what people think, that we pay money for a newspaper and we're paying for the time of the person that put this together, but that's not actually how it works.

Ed Power: Right. It is a business ultimately, and these days it's even more so. I was fortunate in that I did grow up, certainly when I was a reporter and even as a younger editor, in what I would call still the golden years of newspapering. And of course I saw that change dramatically over time when the web came into place and we had to deal with that. And I was also on the senior management team of the newspaper company. And so I watched things change very dramatically from a business point of view. But it's not unlike lots of other industries that have had to go through those sea changes. And right now actually I'm starting to get involved in another one, which is video, television and film.

The book has been bought by a producer in Hollywood, and it's the proposed TV series about a mountain ski town and the people who live there and what that life is like. And so I'm working with those folks on that project. And another project has actually come to pass, that I wrote a screenplay and I'm working with another producer on that. So I'm learning that whole area of the media, broadly speaking. It is certainly media and it's just a different industry and a different culture, I would say. It's Hollywood focused, and television and film are different mediums. And so I'm having to learn that and how they work. So it's been interesting at my age to be able to do that.

Lisa Belisle: Well, I can feel that you and I are kindred spirits, and my husband will tell you this, that there's probably not too many things that I've started looking into and I think, oh, I could see myself doing that. I happen to go into medicine, that's my professional job as a physician. But when you get to know the different language and there's a different culture, and I interviewed somebody recently who talked about it from an anthropologic standpoint. You're simultaneously in the group that you're paying attention to, and also you see it with an outsider's eye. And I think that very much lines up with what you're saying, that you continue to seek these experiences that just give you a different perspective.

Ed Power: No question. And I think that if you feel like you have a talent and you enhance that talent by studying and learning the craft, I used the word craft, I love that word, it opens up worlds to you. Suddenly the world becomes a bigger place and you see things that you think, like you said, I can do that. I want to do that. And I've been doing that lately with this script writing. I had to bring to bear my writing skills and that craft, but it's still a different format. You have to learn to do the work within that format and understand what the constraints are in some ways, but also what the areas are that you feel like you can bring that talent and that knowledge that you've developed over a long period of time, and bring that to bear in this different format or this different work or culture or whatever it happens to be. So I think that's a great thing. And I think that if you don't have that interest and that curiosity, and you're always looking at things and trying to understand how you could play there, if you don't do that, I think you're missing something in this life. So I agree.

Lisa Belisle: Well, I'm glad. I like it when people agree with me. I think most of us do. But I also think what you're describing, and what I've experienced, so I won't speak for you, but I can speak for myself, that it also requires, it's a risk in a different way, because you're continually putting yourself in the beginner space. You can know what you know in the fields that you've been in and you can use that when you enter into a new field. But there's never a way that you can reemerge fully as an expert. So you always have to have that risk of being vulnerable, not knowing enough, being willing to learn. And that's not always easy.

Ed Power: As we all know, the old sayings about, you learn more from your failures than your successes, actually is true. And I think that you don't go through life without having some failures or some disappointments. It's just the nature of life. And so what you have to do is develop what you can call a thick skin or whatever you want to call it. But I think what you really end up realizing is, and I read something the other day, they said, having someone tell you that you can't do something just means that you can't do it with them. It doesn't mean you can't do it with somebody else. And I think that's where I am in life. I don't take it personally. If somebody doesn't like something or doesn't want to do a project with me, it's like, okay, this is just not the right person. And I think you have to kind of get there. When you're young, it's harder to accept that and just move on. But I think over time you develop that sense of, it's just the way life is.

Lisa Belisle: Well, I would extend that. I would say maybe it means you can't do that with them yet. Maybe there's the opportunity, because I think sometimes you do end up in spaces where that's the only person to do it with. So you have to find a way. And I think in writing, as in most media, there's a process of influence that goes on, because you're crafting a narrative and you're shaping the way people see things, or hoping to. So maybe it's a situation where you have to bring those skills to bear.

Ed Power: Yep, I agree with that. If you really think this person or this situation is the right thing, you just have to figure out, okay, how do I adapt to the playing rules or whatever they might be that this person has laid out for me? How do I convince them that, no, I can play here, I just have to do it this way instead, or something. I've seen situations like that, and dealing with people in California, Los Angeles, Hollywood, it's definitely a different culture for sure. And so I've had to sense that and adapt to that.

Lisa Belisle: Oh, it'll be interesting to see. I will certainly be watching the, sounds like a television series, maybe a Netflix kind of series. I'll certainly be watching when that comes out, hopefully. And maybe you and I can have a conversation afterwards about what you've learned from that particular experience.

Ed Power: Definitely. I've definitely learned a lot in a short period of time, and I think that will continue to be the case. We did a scouting trip in June in Utah for potential filming locations. And so we had a producer, Craig Gordon, the avalanche guy, was on board with that. And we had an actor actually. And so we spent three, four days just touring around, looking at locations, talking to people about filming opportunities. So that alone, I learned, it was the drinking from the fire hose kind of experience.

Lisa Belisle: So tell me about your connection with the Portland Art Gallery, and in particular, I happen to know that there is an artist that you now share a home with, or at least his pieces. And that is William Crosby.

Ed Power: William Crosby, exactly. Great artist. Great artist. And my wife and I have been big art fans and engaged with art for many, many years. When I was in my corporate job in Virginia, I was actually chairman of the board of trustees for the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach. And so we've been engaged with the arts for many, many years. And so when we moved here to Maine, we just bought a place here a year ago, we immediately joined the art museum and also started going to art galleries, just because we thought, well, this is a great way to get to know the culture and some of the people here. And we happened into the Portland Art Gallery and met the director there, Emma Wilson. And we fell in love with William Crosby's work.

Maine has such a rich history in the arts and of artists who have spent time here, particularly Monhegan Island has been this attraction for many, many artists to go there and paint en plein air the beautiful settings along the Maine coast. And so Crosby's work to us spoke to that. It really captured for us a sense of that history of the artists who've worked in Maine. Rockwell Kent, I'm a big fan of his work. And of course the Portland Art Museum has some of his work. And I could see flashes in William Crosby's work of Rockwell Kent. Kent was somewhat of a trained architect, and Crosby has some of that training as well. And you can just see it in the work.

But he also blends that with just the richness of the landscape and the seascape, and so we were really attracted to his work and acquired one of his pieces. So it's been great. And Maine, in Portland in particular, I can't say that I've traveled widely in Maine. We've been up north some, but Portland in particular is a place that just has a vibrant feel to it. And it's an exciting place to be right now. We went to the presentation on the new wing for the art museum and the four different architectural firms that presented, this was world-class work. It was not like something you might see in a small town. These were presentations and concepts that were world-class for sure. And so you see things like that going on in Portland and in Maine, and it's exciting. It's an exciting place to be.

Lisa Belisle: Well, I certainly also feel like Maine has always been in my mind kind of up and coming. And I've enjoyed having lived here many, many years, my family being from here originally, just watching the evolution. And it makes me happy to hear you say that these world class things are happening, because not only do we attract people who are the right people to live here, but we still have people who have been here for generations, who are also the right people to live here. So it's really been exciting to watch this evolve over time.

Ed Power: Well, my wife Marguerite grew up in France and England, her father was with the State Department. And Marguerite and I have lived in New York. We met in New York at Columbia and lived there for five years. And we've lived in Virginia. We lived at one time for seven years in Mexico, not full-time, but a lot of time in Mexico. And we traveled widely and we just came back from Africa. We spent a month in Africa, which may be another book, we'll see. And so we come to Portland and this place is a world-class city, it's beautiful. It's interesting. There's culture here, there's arts, there's music. We've been to the symphony, we've been to some other venues that were great, the State Theatre I think. And so it's just a wonderful place, and I don't think it's by any means hidden from the wider culture in this country, but I think that you have to come to Maine to understand it. And we were coming here because our son had moved here, over about a 10 year period, and we really grew to love the place.

Lisa Belisle: Well, we are very happy that you and Marguerite have come to Maine and are staying in Maine. And I know you and I and Marguerite and all of our Portland Art Gallery artists were together during our recent events. So we hope that you'll come back again and you'll join us for one of those events in the future.

Ed Power: Absolutely. Love coming to see the gallery and talk to the people. We've met a number of people there who obviously all have great interest in the arts. And so we're looking forward to sampling more of that culture that's here.

Lisa Belisle: I've been speaking with author and journalist Ed Power, and clearly so much more than just an author and a journalist, although those are enough. I do encourage you to read his book Dragons in the Snow, and maybe by the time you're watching this, some new developments will have happened from a further media standpoint, so you can be watching things on screen. Very exciting. And I really appreciate you taking the time and coming in and talking with me today.

Ed Power: Thank you, Lisa. I appreciate your invitation. Thanks.