Words: Sakeus Bankson 2017-12-11 21:36:05
On a summer afternoon in Lima, Peru, Doug Krause sat in his apartment thinking about avalanches, because that’s what Krause thinks about in summer. And winter. Krause is pretty much always thinking about avalanches.
That’s because skiing and snow safety are Krause’s passions and his profession. As a patroller, guide, instructor, forecaster, director and founder of a control program at a Japanese ski area, Krause has had avalanches on his mind for the past 25 years.
As such, it’s not surprising avalanches were the subject of his ponderings, especially since he was missing the regional snow safety workshops going on in North America at the time.
“I wished there was some way to access that content,” Krause says. “I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I started thinking how that would be a neat format for delivering avalanche education. I couldn’t find anything like that, and I told a couple people it’d be cool to start one. Suddenly the pressure was on, so I did.”
He named it Slide: The Avalanche Podcast, and released the first episode in November 2016. Over the next five months, what started as a two-minute pilot became 15 full episodes, stretching between 20 and 40 minutes long and covering everything from snow science to situational awareness, group communication skills, and concepts bordering on the metaphysical. It’s a stunning variety, a reflection of Krause’s own wandering and wide-ranging story.
Krause grew up in Vermont, and in 1993 decided to spend a year skiing in Colorado. By the time he reached Kansas, he says he’d talked himself into staying two years. After bouncing around the different ski towns of Summit County, he took a job as a patroller at Arapahoe Basin, introducing him to his first professional job in snow safety. In 2004, he began patrolling at Silverton Mountain, CO, where he became the snow safety director three years later. Then it was Alaska, where he worked as both a guide and the snow safety director for H2O Guides Heli Skiing in Valdez. Along the way he dabbled in avalanche education, which eventually became its own gig. Most recently, he’s been working with the Silverton Avalanche School.
That’s just his North American resume. Krause’s wife, Virginia, works for the U.S. State Department, and her job postings have included Colombia, Thailand and Venezuela, to name a few. In 2000, Doug journeyed with Virginia to Las Leñas, Argentina, which kicked off a personal and professional trend of South American summer skiing that continues to this day. More recently, he’s worked in Japan as a patroller and forecaster on the main island. In 2014, he started an avalanche control program at the Tsugaike Kogen ski area in Nagano, Japan. “Basically, I’ve been around the horn,” Krause says. “And I’ve spent a lot of time in an airline seat.”
With so much experience, Krause began Slide with a vast amount of knowledge from which to draw—too much, it turned out. Avalanche science can make for heavy subject matter, as can the concepts behind good decision-making tactics. Krause says presenting that information in a way that’s easy to digest, but not “dumbed down” or overly simplified, may be his biggest challenge.
“Most of the feedback has been, ‘Wow, this material is really dense!’” he says. “Some people are excited by that, some overwhelmed, some don’t know what to think and have to listen three or four or five times.”
The variety of his audience’s experience presents another big difficulty. How do you reach those who have only basic avalanche knowledge, as well as those at the professional level? The best method he’s found is anecdote and storytelling, and Krause has plenty of stories to tell. He’ll explain a principle, then provide a personal situation demonstrating it in a real-life setting. Sometimes he uses other people’s stories, and for one episode he didn’t have an example, so he just made one up. It allows him to present one idea as a “complete sort of package” in every show.
“I hate using the term ‘human factor,’ because I think it belittles the scope of issues that surround us humans,” Krause says. “But if there’s a takeaway from Slide, it’s that you can take these decision-making problems—like communication and situational awareness—and break them down into their constituent parts. Improving your decision-making skills is within reach of anyone. They just have to practice.
“A lot of ways, it’s almost more of a psychology and cognitive science podcast than it is an avalanche podcast.”
While the first season leaned toward the cerebral side of avalanche safety, for the second season Krause would like to balance that with “technical nuts-and-bolts.” It may be a little more difficult to understand for some, but Krause doesn’t see that as a bad thing. In some ways, it’s essential.
“I think people need to have correct avalanche language to communicate effectively,” he says. “If I want to appeal to folks who may not have much experience, then it’s appropriate to take a minute here and there to explain the terminology. But I think it’s still going to trend toward the conceptual side, with a lot more stories, I hope.”
After nearly two decades of keeping to a Colorado/South America schedule, Doug and Virginia are changing things up. Virginia recently took a post there, so Doug will be spending his North American summer months in New Zealand, then returning to Colorado for winter (and wherever else his skis may take him). But loyal listeners need not worry; beginner or expert, they’ll be able to tune in for more snow safety—and more dad jokes, of course.
“If people can get a couple laughs and just listen to it for a half an hour while they’re en route to something, that’s fantastic,” he says. “I would like Slide to be in a place where people are stoked to listen when they’re driving to work or the trailhead or even while on the skintrack, and have it be entertaining in a casual way, but informative enough that it’s worth taking notes. If it gets to the point where that’s not really possible, well, then I have a density problem.”
©Funny Feelings LLC. View All Articles.