Snow Master

Skiing across Squaw Valley's Headwall run to the edge of the steep, funnel-like slope called the Slot, Norm Wilson looked down at the huge, glistening snowfield below him.

It was one day after a big snowfall, but the sunlight was warm. Little did he know that melting snow was rapidly eating away at the base of the pack.

"It was in 1953 on my first day of snow safety," recalls Wilson. "I had no idea what was going on. I was just following Dave Fritschi and John Mortizia. I didn't know enough to be scared."

After watching his companions skicheck the slope, he made a move to go across. He heard a gentle whisper, almost a sigh, felt a tremor through his skis and then watched helplessly as the mountain shrugged into an avalanche. "Luckily, it only caught me up to my waist," he says, "but it was enough to make me instantly respect the snow. It also awakened enough curiosity to get me hooked on playing with Mother Nature the rest of my life."

After countless near misses during his pioneering, 50-year career as snow scientist and avalanche forecaster, Wilson admits that he's lucky to be alive. He's half-deaf from dynamite blasting and suffers from a chronic back injury sustained on a steep mountain slope. He's gone for a ride in a torrent of snow with a lit charge that should have blown him up but was fortunately knocked away and went off just below him. And while helping to develop the modern day avalauncher—a compressed gas projectile launcher—he blew up his own truck.

"In 1967, [snow science pioneer] Monty Atwater and I were experimenting with using external firing pins mounted onto the projectile and attached to the pull wire igniter," Wilson recalls. "We wanted the charge to go off at the surface, so we were trying out new springs. We loaded the launcher onto the back of my truck, drove up Alpine Meadows Road and began experimenting. Unfortunately, one time we used too soft a spring to hold the firing pin, and the back of my truck was blown apart like a sieve. I ended up collecting my insurance, but my company told me that they'd never quite had a claim like mine."

"Almost everyone who spends years ski patrolling gets beat up," says Leroy Hill, a former ski patroller and director of the Squaw Valley Ski School, who became Wilson's assistant as a snow ranger for the state during the 1960s. "But Norm was incredibly physical. He loved to hike and climb in the mountains and was in awesome shape. I think his pulse rate was once measured at 29."

"You have to remember that back then Norm and these other guys were on their own out there," says Larry Heywood, a ski and snow consultant and instructor at the National Avalanche School. "They didn't have cell phones, radios, snowmobiles, grooming machines or anyone ready to come get them if something went wrong. Norm was one tough guy, but he survived and laid the groundwork for today's professionals because he was so practical."

Wilson grew up in San Mateo, California, and during World War II began hitchhiking up to Soda Springs to go skiing and climbing. After the war, he got a job running a rope tow at Sugar Bowl and then moved to Innsbruck, Austria, to study German.

In 1953, Wilson and his new wife, Joan, moved to Tahoe City, and he took a job at Squaw Valley as lift attendant before working his way onto the ski patrol. During the 1960 Olympics, Wilson worked alongside other future snow safety legends Peter Klaussen, Dick Stillman, Monty Atwater and Dick Weiss to make sure that avalanches would not disrupt the Games.

"Norm is a second-generation avalanche hunter who came up the only way there is, the hard way," writes Atwater in his book, The Avalanche Hunters. "He demonstrated a flair for avalanche control during the Games and thereafter that incurable itch to know 'why,' which characterizes the research man."

Wilson conducted systematic studies of temperature, rate of snowfall, snow types, moisture in the snow, effect of wind and the relationship of these factors to actual avalanche occurrence. After years of on-snow experience, he and others began to be able to more accurately predict the likelihood of an avalanche.

In 1961, Wilson became the State of California's first snow ranger. He traveled extensively for decades after that, setting up avalanche control programs for ski resorts and mining operations. In between the travel, he helped raise two daughters, Robie and Chresten, and helped found the American Avalanche Institute.

"Wilson was a mentor for myself and many others," says Heywood. "He set up programs at Whistler, Stevens Pass, in South America and around the world. He led by example but was a teacher, too. He had a great way of connecting with others." In the spring of 2005, Wilson's lifelong contributions were recognized by the American Avalanche Association with the Dragon Slayer Award, granted to those few who have demonstrated the ability to teach the craft of avalanche control. Up until a year ago, Wilson trained personnel and directed avalanche control for Yosemite National Park. But he has recently retired due to illness. "I have no regrets about my life in the mountains," says the 76-year-old mountaineer. "There was never anything that beat being on skis in the mountains. And I met a hell of a lot of good people over the years. That alone has meant much in my life. The great outdoors plays no favorites, but thank goodness it's been good to me."

—Robert Frohlich