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Staff
Bruce Tremper
Director
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Bruce has been the Director of the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center since 1986. Bruce grew up in the mountains of western Montana where his father taught him the basics of avalanches at the age of 10. After a successful 15-year ski racing career, he did avalanche control at Bridger Bowl Ski Area in Montana, earned a Masters Degree in Geology from Montana State University, studying under the well-known avalanche scientists Dr. John Montagne and Dr. Bob Brown. He then took over as the Director of Avalanche Control at Big Sky Ski Area in Montana and worked as a backcountry avalanche forecaster for the Alaska Avalanche Center. Bruce has been featured in a number of national and international television documentaries about avalanches including those produced by National Geographic, Discovery Channel and PBS as well as appearing on a number of national network news programs. Bruce wrote the book "Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain," published by Mountaineers Books, now in its second edition. |
Evelyn Lees
Forecaster
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Evelyn Lees has been a forecaster with the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center since 1989. Before that, she worked as a meteorology field technician for a cloud seeding project in Utah. Evelyn spends her summers as a senior guide for Exum Mountain Guides in the Grand Teton National Park. She has been on mountaineering expeditions in Tibet (Mount Everest), Pakistan, Alaska and South America. She has degrees in both Geology and Soils. |
Drew Hardesty
Forecaster
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Drew's been with us since 1999. After receiving a BA in Political Science from the University of Colorado in Boulder, he took a commission with the US Navy as an Intelligence officer during the first Desert Storm. Subsequent to working abroad, he spent a number of years working and guiding for NOLS and Outward Bound in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Alaska. Drew now spends his summers as a climbing ranger in Grand Teton National Park. His passions include dip-netting kings out of the Copper, breaking trail, and following his son through the trees at Alta. |
Brett Kobernik
Forecaster
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Brett Kobernik has been with the Utah Avalanche Center since the 2004-2005 winter season. He has worked as a helicopter skiing guide in Valdez, Alaska in the mid 90s, has been a backcountry ski and snowboard guide for Exum guides in Utah for a number of years and he has worked as a product tester and designer for Voile Equipment in Salt Lake City. Since Brett single handedly invented the split board, he does much of his field work on a split snowboard and is versed on skis and snowmobiles as well. (Click HERE for a cool video profile of Brett.) Brett is also responsible for much of the technical "behind the scenes" work on the UAC's website and is the webmaster for the American Avalanche Association as well. |
Craig Gordon
Forecaster - Western Uinta Mountains
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Craig is the sole avalanche forecaster for the western Uinta Mountains--an area accessed primarily by snowmobile--and also handles much of the avalanche education for snowmobile groups. Craig has done avalanche control for Brighton Ski Area in Utah since the mid 1980's and then worked as a helicopter ski guide. He has worked for the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center since 2000. Craig recently developed the Know Before You Go avalanche education program for young adults in Utah, which has been extremely popular. The program is a 15-minute video with a PowerPoint presentation and is taught either by Craig or one of a team of local avalanche professionals. The program has directly reached over 100,000 students to date. |
Toby Weed
Forecaster - Logan
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Toby Weed is the sole forecaster for the Logan area mountains. He grew up skiing and ski racing in New Hampshire and he ski patrolled at Park City Ski Area for 15 years and and was the Snow Safety Director for four years. He has spent many summers as a climbing guide in the Sierra including Mt. Shasta. He has a bachelor's degree from Goddard College. He does his field work on both snowmobiles and skis. |
Dave Medara
Forecaster - La Sals (Moab)
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Dave grew up in Maine and Graduated from the University of Maine in 1985 with a degree in Business and Computer science. After working as a computer programmer for a couple of years, Dave realized the cubicle life wasn’t going to work out. In 1987 he moved to Alta, UT and was hired on the ski patrol the next year. In 1992 Dave was hired on as a forecaster with the La Sal Avalanche forecast center and has been bouncing back and forth between southern and northern Utah ever since, including a 6 year stint as an avalanche forecaster with UDOT from ’95 to 2001. In the summer time, Dave works as a climbing guide and film rigger with Moab Desert Adventures, a company he started in 1998 and owns with his wife Emma. When he isn’t working on the snow, you’ll find Dave hanging out on the cliffs and crags from the Canyonlands to Southern Spain in search of the next vertical challenge. |
Grant
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