Writing the book about snow safety

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

To say Liam FitzGerald spent his career battling avalanches is putting it lightly. His long career began in 1968, when he got a ski patrol job at Squaw Valley Ski Resort near Lake Tahoe, Calif. (now renamed Palisades Tahoe). 

“The funny thing was, I couldn’t even ski when I got the job,” FitzGerald told the Reader. “It was a pretty unusual situation.”

The winter of 1968-’69 turned out to be quite a heavy snow year, launching FitzGerald into the fascinating phenomena of avalanches. He never looked back.

“I grew up in the Bay Area and spent four years in the military in Arizona, so I never spent any time in the mountains except a month or two the previous season when I got hired on as ski patrol,” he said.

The heavy snow that first year turned out to be a blessing.

Author Liam FitzGerald.

“Luckily it snowed so much that year, a lot of what I did was hiking around, breaking trail through deep snow, throwing hand charges to start avalanches,” FitzGerald said. “By the end of the season I’d survived and become more or less competent, and in some cases even skied out an injured person in a toboggan. I’m quite lucky I survived the whole thing, really.”

FitzGerald migrated from the Sierra Nevadas over to Utah, taking a job with Snowbird Ski Area in 1971, becoming the Snow Safety director during that resort’s opening season.

Snowbird, along with nearby resort Alta, is fairly unique in the ski world thanks to its above-average annual snowfall.

“The 50-year average annual snowfall from November 1 to April 30 is 500 inches, which is a pretty good number over that span of time,” FitzGerald said. “So far this winter they’ve had 480 inches, so it’s quite a banner year down there.”

The heavy snowfall, combined with steep terrain and narrow canyons presents a perfect storm for avalanches. After a few years mitigating avalanche dangers for skiers, FitzGerald found he was hooked. He also kept a daily journal of weather, snowpack and avalanche events from 1972 to 2014, when he retired and moved to the Sandpoint area with his wife Pam. Those daily notes would ultimately assist him in a new endeavor — writing a book about his experiences with avalanche control.

“I was lucky enough to have experienced a lot of what seemed to be exciting, humorous and in some cases, sad events, and I thought there would be a story that people might be interested in,” he said.

With the encouragement of his wife, FitzGerald began writing a book that would eventually become Throwing Stones in a Glass House: A Career Battling Avalanches in Little Cottonwood Canyon.

“What interested me in avalanches?” FitzGerald asked. “It was the fact that the environments are so inherently dangerous and that young, enthusiastic ski patrollers are sent out into the mountain to try and tame the environment to the level where it’s possible for a few thousand people to recreate in that particular area. It’s how fast things can change, and what a formidable force of nature avalanches can be, as well as how hard they are to predict and how deadly they can be.”

FitzGerald said his own experience in a slide left a lasting impression on him.

“I was caught in one that was pretty large and carried me about 850-900 vertical feet,” he said. “It tossed me around a lot. The first thing you notice once you get caught is how fast you move downhill in such a short period of time. You’re engulfed by the dust cloud that accompanies most large avalanches. Then there’s the feeling of absolute helplessness. There’s absolutely nothing I could do whatsoever to direct where I was headed or help prevent any trauma I might incur. … In really large avalanches, you’re just a stick floating in a raging river.”

The cover of Throwing Stones in a Glass House.

It’s not just on the ski hills where avalanche prevention was paramount, but also on the narrow, dead-end mountain road through Little Cottonwood Canyon that led from the millions of people in the Salt Lake City area to the ski resorts. It was after 27 years working at Snowbird that FitzGerald made the transition to the Utah Department of Transportation, managing the Highway Avalanche Safety program in Little Cottonwood Canyon, one of the most avalanche-prone roadways in North America.

“The ski areas in Little Cottonwood — Alta and Snowbird — their lives depend on the road that connects to Salt Lake Valley,” FitzGerald said. 

There were some differences working for the transportation department as opposed to working at the ski resort. Instead of chucking charges to start slides, FitzGerald was now using military artillery, firing live ammunition into starting zones three to four miles from the gun position. Also, making a decision to close the heavily traveled road was much more complicated than shutting down a ski hill due to avalanche troubles.

“This was the first place in North America where active avalanche control work was carried out,” he said. “It’s the birthplace for avalanche research and control. I started my career right in what would be called the ‘golden age’ of avalanche control, when the ski industry was itself taking off.”

FitzGerald said looking back over his career proved to be “a fairly intimate and oftentimes emotional journey,” which allowed him to relive experiences that would ultimately find their way into his book.

“For the general public that isn’t involved in the ski world, avalanches are something you might just read about,” FitzGerald said. “But it’s also associated with the magic of snow and how complex a substance it is. There’s a lot that most people don’t know or understand about it that makes it a unique, unpredictable, mercurial substance. It’s also never overkill to remind people who travel in the backcountry that they have a personal responsibility to conduct themselves in a certain way and to be as informed as they possibly can before they go there.”

Finally, FitzGerald said his book also serves to shine a light on the onerous work done by those who control and educate about snow safety.

“The job that ski patrollers and avalanche professionals do around the world is amazing,” he said. “They put themselves in harm’s way so other people can work or travel or recreate in an environment that if not for their efforts, would be quite hazardous.”

Throwing Stones in a Glass House was published by Booklocker.com and is available for purchase at that website, as well as Amazon and other online booksellers. Locally, it will be available soon on the shelves at both Vanderford’s and the Corner Bookstore.