Nature’s cold power and fury

On Jan. 2, 1998, death arrived with a whumpff!! under a bright, blue sky. Six experienced backcountry skiers in the Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia disappeared, buried under a 90-second freight train of snow, ice, snapped trees and crashing boulders almost half a mile wide. How could things have gone so terribly wrong?

Deftly interlacing science and personal stories, Bowers explores the anatomy of avalanches and avalanche prediction, when “even one snowflake can tip the scale” in the snow’s silent tug of war with forces of gravity, detonating a crystalline holocaust.

The glories of wintry way-back skiing raise vexing issues of acceptable risk, of what it means to live hard and die young searching for peak thrills, and what happens to a backwoods town invaded by media hyenas picking through the emotional debris scattered by an avalanche.

A gripping, if sobering, read for both powder hounds and fireside pups.

--Susan Dworski