Amazon.com description: Product Description: From dust jacket notes: "...Besides being something white, cold and beautiful, what is snow? Its crystalline particles combine in intricate detail to produce a cover restless with the forces of pressure, temperature and gravity. Never in repose, snow is continually being pushed, pulled, pressed, warmed, chilled, ventilated and churned in processes largely invisible and totally unnoticed by the casual observer. Snow can become a whole mountain in motion, turning from friend to enemy without warning, a white death erupting like a volcano. The opening of many new ski areas pointed up the necessity for control, forecasting and the dangerous business of search and rescue. In 1946 Montgomery Atwater joined the United States Forest Service and established the first avalanche research center in this hemisphere at Alta, Utah. His improved techniques, including the use of the Avalauncher (a field piece specifically designed to release slides), are now in use throughout the Americas. This thrilling, firsthand account emphasizes the bold accomplishments of the snow Rangers, but it does not ignore the lessons of disaster. Those who would venture into high places in winter would do well to remember and learn to listen for the innocent but unforgettable sound of an avalanche at the moment of release. A soft whooshing sound like that of a blanket sliding off a tilted table is the mountain's understated introduction to the boiling, crushing, thundering white fury that will follow."