Tom Kimbrough's Letter to a Young Avalanche Forecaster
(I HIGHLY recommend listening to Tom reading his short essay.)
Drew asked me to contribute to this article but this Old Fool doesn’t
have much to say that would be of use to young folks.
I have been retired for twenty years and today isn’t much like the
world that I worked in. It seems to me that technology has changed
more in the last twenty years than it did in the forty years that I
worked in the mountains.
And the rate of change may be about to move much more rapidly. AI will
certainly change forecasting in ways unimaginable to me. Will there
even be a place for humans in the weather/avalanche forecasting
business?
Well maybe ………
Many years ago, when computers were first being used in our work, Ron
Perla presented a paper at an ISSW thinking about the limitations of
computers. What I remember from what Perla said was that however
skillful the computers were, they couldn’t really know what it was
like to be high on a steep mountain ridge in the middle of a powerful
winter storm. Is that still true? Will it still be true in five
years? Is that experience still valuable?
Anyway this is an exciting time to be working. Of course I am full of
envy. The combination of physical and mental challenges in avalanche
forecasting remains a wonderful way to be useful to our communities.
And, at least so far, you still get to ski powder.
My advice:
Enjoy and be safe. Maybe it will still be a few years before the
Hornbein Couloir is bumped out like the Main Chute on Baldy.
Originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee, Kimbrough learned to ski on a landfill covered with snow outside of Cleveland Ohio... and soon engaged in auto racing, inspired by Hemingway's comments about only three sports in the world (bull-fighting, mountaineering, and auto-racing - everything else is a game).
On leave from the Army in 1963, Tom caught his first glimpse of the Teton Range and, one might say, the rest is history. Kimbrough began ski patrolling in the winter of 66/67 and since patrolled at Alpine Meadows in California and then Alta before taking a job at the Utah Avalanche Center in 1987. But officially, he began climbing and skiing on the government dime in 1973 as a Jenny Lake Climbing Ranger in Grand Teton National Park, where he worked until 2003.
Kimbrough continues to ski and climb on the government dime (social security and retirement) in the Wasatch Range with his wife Barb Eastman (a famous climber in her own right) and son Paul Kimbrough (an accomplished skier and climber, living in Bishop, California).
