I dropped a vehicle off at Brett Kobernik's house yesterdayand caught him working in his garage. I thought others would be amazed, as I always am,in a look behind the scenes ofthe skunkworks of the Utah Avalanche Center and the genius of Brett Kobernik.

Here, on the left, he has a couple of motorcycles converted into snow bikes with a snowmobile track on the back and a ski in the front. He usually rides these instead of snowmobiles because they are so much more nimble and easier to get unstuck. On the right, he has built a prototype of a mobile weather station with technical expertise and collaboration with UDOT forecasters. The weather station measures snow height, wind, temperature, snow surface temperate and both incoming and outgoing heat energy and it also has a video camera. If that's not enough, he's our web monkey, plus a full time forecaster. Brett never ceases to amaze me.

From Drew Hardesty's interview the other day: "Originally a Michigan farmer, he has that keen inquisitive eye for understanding how things work. With a PHD in garage science, as Drew Hardesty puts it, he is the father of the original split-board and has built his own snow density kits, ram-penetrometer for gauging snowpack structure, thermocron I-buttons for measuring snow temps…the list goes on and on. And while he was laid up with a broken femur (from a dirt-biking accident in southern Utah), he taught himself how to code and now he’s the de-facto computer expert for the team. He’s easy-going, quick with a laugh, and always good for socializing at the end of the day."