Brief: Alan Dennis documents 50 years forecasting avalanches with Snow Nomad: An Avalanche Memoir

This story is part of a feature that first appeared in print in Revelstoke Mountaineer Magazine’s July 2022 issue. Read the entire e-edition here:

50 years is a long time to be doing anything, let alone forecasting avalanches across four continents. Snow Nomad: An Avalanche Memoir is Revelstoke resident Alan Dennis’s one and only — as he insists — book, which documents his decades spent on an unconventional career path travelling between Canada, New Zealand, Scotland, and Argentina.

Dennis’s background and journey into avalanche safety is an unlikely one. He was born in Malta to a British family and was the son of a Royal Navy officer. Dennis says he never predicted that he’d spend five decades working in the field of avalanche safety, let alone be lured back into it after retiring at 51.

Dennis came to Revelstoke to work for the Canadian Avalanche Association and help set up the public side of what’s now become Avalanche Canada. He kept a home base in the area as he continued travelling to work in Argentina and other parts of British Columbia. After finally retiring — for real this time — Dennis traded the snow for the sea aboard a boat he named in honour of his father’s seafaring days, S/V Griffin.

Snow Nomad is at once a humble and heartfelt tribute to family, friends and colleagues and a quirky account of Dennis getting in over his head but learning to rely on training and a bit of luck in the process. Dennis documents the ways avalanche work has changed over the last 40 to 50 years, from an occupation that required a great deal of luck and intuition, to a field with stronger methodology.

Snow Nomad teaches the reader a thing or two about avalanche control while keeping them entertained with dry wit and the adventure of it all. It’s available online for purchase through FriesenPress and at Fable Book Parlour in Revelstoke.

Publisher: FriesenPress

Publication date: January 19, 2022

Pages: 228