Ed LaChapelle passes on

Legendary snowranger, avalanche researcher & educator, author and backcountry skiier Ed LaChapelle died February 1st truly doing what he loved - skiing.  All of us owe Ed a great debt  for his pioneering work in snow science and safety.  He wrote the first American skiers guide to  avalanche safety - The ABC's of Avalanche Safety, as well as pioneered the development of avalanche beacons.  It would be hard to say enough about his life and contributions to the sport and life we love as mountain travelers, whether lift served or backcountry.  Above all he enjoyed life, shared it all who cared and had a wonderful sense of humor.   
Gerry H

This is really sad news. If anybody sees a published obituary or tribute for Ed LaChapelle elsewhere on the web, I hope you will post a link here.

I interviewed Ed on the phone a few years ago. I hoped I'd make more progress on my ski history book while he was still around. My notes from our conversation can be found here .

I've told this story before, but perhaps not on TAY. During my first year at U.W. I took an atmospheric sciences survey course taught by Ed LaChapelle in Kane Hall. After a lecture in which he showed some mountaineering pictures I approached him and asked for any tips he might have for predicting the weather while in the mountains. I expected him to say something about barometric pressure, wind direction, cloud types, and so on. Instead he told me, "If I wanted to know what the weather was going to do on a mountain trip, I would take a weather radio." Doh! I've done that many times since then.

Garth Ferber graciously took my copy of "Glacier Ice" to an NWAC Christmas party a few years ago for Ed to sign. After Garth told him this story, Ed laughed and signed the book: "Lowell -- Don't forget your weather radio! Best wishes from a fellow mountaineer. -- Ed LaChapelle"

Thanks Ed! I treasure your good advice and the light-hearted way you passed it along.

Thread on Telemarkips:  www.telemarktalk.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php...ce803ca5d3fb8e5b4489

And....

From: www.newwest.net/index.php/snow_blog/arti...pelle_dies/C458/L41/

Avalanche Pioneer Ed LaChapelle Dies
By Bob Berwyn, 2-01-07


According to a thread posted on TelemarkTips.com, snow scientist and avalanche guru Ed LaChapelle died Feb. 1 at Monarch Mountain ski area. LaChapelle was skiing with Knox Williams, former director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, and Art Mears, another Colorado-based avalanche expert, when he became ill and was taken away in an ambulance.

Ed LaChapelle died just a week after his ex-wife, Dolores LaChapelle, died of a stroke in Durango, Colorado. Both were known for their deep, intimate involvement with the world of mountains and snow, and both will be sorely missed.

Ed LaChapelle was born in 1926 in Tacoma, Washington and started his snow science career at the renowned Swiss Avalanche Institute as a guest worker in 1950-1951. He served as a U.S. Forest Service snow ranger at Alta, Utah from 1952 to 1972, with breaks to do glacier research in Greenland, Alaska and Mt. Olympus. He was appointed to the faculty of the University of Washington in 1967, retired as Professor Emeritus of Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences in 1982. Between 1973 and 1977, Ed was involved in avalanche studies at the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) of the University of Colorado at Boulder, spending winters at Silverton in the San Juan mountains.

LaChapelle was part of the pioneering crew of Forest Service snow rangers at Alta who laid the basic groundwork for avalanche control programs at ski areas and for highway departments. As well, he authored The ABCs of Avalanche Safety, a slender, pocket-size how-to manual that has for decades been a mandatory text for winter backcountry travelers.

The Alta snow rangers were dubbed the Avalanche Hunters in Monte Atwater’s seminal book on the Forest Service research program. They refined the use of explosives for avalanche control work with some dicey and exciting field experiments, well-described in Atwater’s book.

While Atwater wrote the first Forest Service avalanche manual, LaChapelle refined the work and published the agency’s first official avalanche handbook in 1961. The ABCs of Avalanche Safety was a direct outgrowth of that work, according to a telephone interview with LaChapelle, taped by Lowell Skoog in 2001.

He was also involved with another ground-breaking innovation that has become a standard piece of equipment for backcountry powder skiers — the avalanche transceiver. LaChapelle began experimenting with the use of radio transmitters as a locator for buried avalanche victims in 1968. Working with John Lawton, an electrical engineer who skied regularly at Alta, LaChapelle refined the device, which gradually evolved as the “Skadi,” which remained the primary avalanche search beacon for many years.

A detailed history of the birth of the avalanche transceiver, including the text of a letter penned by LaChapelle, is online at Lou Dawson’s Wild Snow blog.

Ed LaChapelle was a well-loved and respected member in the brotherhood of avalanche experts, and his passing leaves a big void. A few of the comments on the TelemarkTips thread reflect the respect he engendered, as other avy pros recalled their last meetings with him at the International Snow Science Workshop in Telluride this past fall.

Edit:  Here is an interesting read on Delores LaChapelle: www.newwest.net/index.php/topic/article/...lachapelle/C458/L41/

And some pictures of Delores at: www.lib.utah.edu/spc/photo/P981/P0981.html

I didn't think that I knew who Ed LaChapelle was. Now I realize that I have a couple of his books, so he has been and will be a presence to me. I have really enjoyed reading the blogs and threads about him and am very grateful for the hard work that he did for us.

As a boy scout I climbed Mt Olympus in 1966. During the ascent, as a side excursion, our leaders who I only knew as Louie and Craig, took us over to LaChapelles research station on the Blue Glacier. This visit is one of my earliest and most vivid mountain recollections. As I recall, he and his assistants had chainsawed this tunnel into the glacier several hundred feet down to the bed rock. There we were, on the underside of this huge frozen river looking up at the blue hue of hundreds of feet of water ice. This side trip and his work has made a life long impact on me for which I am very greatful. And like Lowell I also followed up on my interest and respect for his work by taking his Atmospheric Science class in the early 70s. As I reflect back on my chance meeting of him it has occured to me that he has had a larger influence on me than I had previously thought. RIP Professor LaChapelle, may your skies be blue and the powder deep.

Eric Lindahl

I have seen time-lapse video from those ice tunnel experiments. It is amazing, otherworldly almost. The rock is slipping by below, and you can watch as the walls deform elastically under the pressure and start to squeeze off the tunnel. I wish I had been at UW a couple decades earlier when he was still teaching there.