Veteran Forecaster Don Bachman on the San Juan Avalanche Project

Utah Avalanche Center Podcast

In the spring of 1971, Don Bachman walked into the mining town of Silverton, Colorado, with a mission, not quite from God, but from the federal government: Study avalanches in the San Juan Mountains. The Bureau of Reclamation had recently established a cloud-seeding program in the region, and it was Bachman’s job—as part of a veritable ‘Murderers Row’ of snow science pioneers—to map and study the avalanche problem in the area and get a sense of how it would be impacted by atmospheric tampering. Bachman joins us to talk about the project and how conservative decision making in the backcountry can lead to a long life in the snowy mountains.