"All to go, one to no." — Sara Boilen NSAW 2020, "Your Brain is a Double Agent"
"[A whiteout is] not just snow but snow in a tantrum, snow angry at being used for too many pretty winter scenes in postcards and poems, snow proving it can be mean and serious." — Julia Alvarez via Jill Fredston Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches
"If he underestimated the hazard, he was also vulnerable to overestimating his ability to deal with it. In this context, as Gonzales writes, 'the word "experienced" often refers to someone who’s gotten away with doing the wrong thing more frequently than others.' We think of experience as a classroom, yet it can also be a prison." — Jill Fredston and Laurence Gonzales Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches
"Automobile safety studies tell us that if we drive a mere two miles, we generally make four hundred observations and forty decisions. In the same stretch, we typically make one mistake—maybe we pull up too close to the car in front, or don’t stop fully at a stop sign, or forget to flick on the turn signal. Usually, the mistakes are inconsequential, and even if we notice them, they don’t seem to merit a moment’s reflection. If someone pulls out of a side road and cuts us off one morning, we tend to shake our fists and pretend that we would never be so 'stupid,' but most likely the day will come when we are in a hurry, or preoccupied, or exhausted, and we will do the same thing." — Jill Fredston Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches
"With his ability came an unasked-for authority. He was looked to as a leader and often relied upon to make decisions about potential danger." — Jill Fredston Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches
"[When discussing whether to report an avalanche] I wondered if I would be ridiculed for not knowing exact specifics, or for getting my terminology wrong. Maybe my line wasn’t rad enough. Maybe I was exposing a secret by including names of access and route lines. Maybe I was simply overreacting altogether." — Matt Hansen Powder Magazine, "Getting Beyond the Emotional Game of Reporting an Avalanche"
"All you want is a yes or no answer to the question 'Is the slope safe?' Columnist Anna Quindlen has written, 'We are a nation raised on True or False tests.' As far as you can tell, most avalanche questions are answered with 'It depends.'" — Anna Quindlen via Jill Fredston Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches
"The more intensely we want something, the more reasons we will likely find that make it okay." — Jill Fredston Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches
"What we see often has more to do with what we have seen in the past or what we hope or expect to see than it does with what is staring us in the face." — Jill Fredston Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches
"To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, to imagine your facts is another." — John Burroughs
"In the inner workings of his brain, he had tagged it a happy, rewarding place. (Ali: the opposite is also true)" — Jill Fredston Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches
"The longer the time lag between taking a risk and feeling its consequences, the more likely we are to ignore the risk." — Jill Fredston Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches
"Most avalanche accidents happen when the terrain is a red light, the snowpack is a red light, and the skies have cleared, with sparkling green-light weather that entices people into the mountains." — Jill Fredston Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches
"Familiarity and accessibility, however, inflate the problem by making us complacent. The mountains don’t behave any differently just because they are close to town." — Jill Fredston Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches
"But we’re destined to lose any waiting game with nature, which has infinitely more time than we do. Thirty years is nothing but a nap in the life of an avalanche path." — Jill Fredston Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches
"Avalanches are like fish: they tend to run in schools." — Jill Fredston Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches
"Like Silly Putty, snow can flow and bend into ribbons and folds, and it can also bounce or spring. But when yanked rather than gently stretched, Silly Putty will break. If snow is stressed too much or too rapidly, it also becomes brittle and ruptures into pieces." — Jill Fredston Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches
"The body doesn’t know miles, it knows stress. If an athlete does the same types of miles as a gold medalist, there’s a good chance the stress could turn their body and spirit into a pile of smoldering rubble." — David Roche via Brendan Leonard Outside Online, "17 Training Myths, Addressed by a Running Coach"
