Last October, after years spent studying avalanches, he signed on with the Utah Avalanche Center. When Alta told him the best path to getting on their ski patrol was to gain experience elsewhere, he spent a winter in Colorado and another winter in Montana learning the ropes before returning to Utah and getting hired at Alta. “I felt the empowerment and the draw of the mountains,” he says. He had student loans to pay and people back home scratching their heads about what on earth Dave was doing out there in the West. “It was supposed to be a one-off kind of thing,” he says. Then he would move on to graduate school and some vague, yet-to-be-determined career. “And nonstop and never-ending.”ĭave, who just turned 40, came here 19 years ago after graduating from college in New Hampshire so he could ski for a year and get that out of his system. ![]() “Epic would be a word you could say for it,” he says. That’s been a majority of the time this winter.ĭespite all the early-morning shifts, how would he describe the season? Every time it snows he arises at 2:30 a.m. To say this season has kept him busy is a gross understatement. Nowhere is there more glee about all this than in the mountains themselves - where the people hang out who love snow the most.ĭave is a part-time ski patroller at Alta Ski Area and a full-time forecaster at the Utah Avalanche Center. This year, it will be something of a surprise if the total doesn’t break the 800-inch barrier - that’s 66.6 feet - by the end of April. Here at Alta, the venerable mining town turned ski mecca, the most snow ever recorded at the historic guard station located on the north side of the highway is 745.4 inches during the winter of 1994-95. It started snowing in October and it’s only stopped so it could start again. ![]() There have been big, long winters before, but none shaping up to be bigger or longer than 2022-23. The mountains - and this will come as no surprise to anyone who has been conscious in Utah the past five months - are well on their way to a record snowfall season.
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