There has been lots going on with the CSAC Snow and Avalanche, both with the project and the web site - so here is an update. Remember that even though winter is over spring is still part of avalanche season. Don't be caught off guard - we are still updating the Incidents Section too much. Now that most advisories have ended for the season the best place to get information is from others - http://www.avalanche-center.org/Bulletins/discussion.html Of course, this is only useful if people submit reports, so please do! Sponsors As we grow we are getting more interest in sponsorships. We welcome Sierra Ski Touring as a sponsor for our Education page. They do avalanche and other backcountry courses in winter, ski tours, and other related summer activities. Check them out - follow the linked logo on our Education page. They join existing sponsors Marmot, Life-Link, Transworld Snowboarding, Skinet, Zephyr Cove Snowmobile Center, the Oregon Mountaineering Association, and Alpengroup. Hopefully we'll have more for next season. T-Shirts, Store We finally have some really cool t-shirts for sale in our online store. The design is by Dan Harris Design and Illustration in Sacramento and much of the effort in getting them printed was taken care of by Phil Caterino of Alpengroup - a sponsor of our "Other Cool Stuff" page. Our initial supply is dwindling rapidly, so we may need to have more printed soon to fill orders. So order soon, but be patient if we need to have more printed! In addition to t-shirts we have added a few more things to the store. One of these things is a new inclinometer and snow pit card from the Alaska Mountain Safety Center. Another is John Moyniers avalanche safety book. (John issues the Eastern Sierra advisories.) We will be adding a few more things over the summer, and plan to take credit cards by the fall. Project News It's been a tough winter this year. We had problems during most of the peak season, and especially in late Feb and early March, with our web hosting service. (Disk space use on the server reached 100% and many bad things began to happen.) The site had to be checked regularly to make sure everything was still ok. We also have been uncertain about our office space all winter. The building changed hands and it wasn't clear if we could stay or how long. Neither of these issues have been resolved entirely but both are looking better at the moment. On the up side we received a particularly generous contribution which has allowed us to operate out of debt for the first time ever. This will be very helpful should we need to relocate our office and/or our server at some point over the summer, although either situation would still be a stretch. In another bit of progress we now have an "office" in Vancouver for CSAC-Canada. We hope to be able to do something similar in Europe in the near future. Site Design We are currently tweaking and updating the design of the site. We plan to keep the familiar look and the organization, but are working on some graphics changes. We have already cut down the spawl at the top of the main pages so that there is less scrolling to get to the content. A volunteer graphic artist is supposed to be working on a new main page header for us which will be narrower and the width of a standard screen, hopefully reducing the scolling further as well as looking better. We are debating the addition of some navigating aids over the summer, one question being whether to use java/javascript and how to do that in a way which does not crash some peoples browsers. We continue to opt for getting information to people over features which crash some viewers browsers, even if that part of our audience is small. Last season we had problems arise from the simplest imaginable piece of javascript. Download Section - NEW! We have a whole new section which is now online, although we hope to have much more in it by the start of next season. This section will have materials which can be downloaded and printed using Adobe Acrobat Reader. Reader is a free plug-in which is widely used now, and a link to the download site for it is on our page. We have a few posters and quick-reference cards now available, some conference circulars, several data recording forms, and some CSAC promotional stuff. Watch for more over the Southern Hemisphere winter. We have not linked it to the home page yet, but it has an icon on the navigating bar at the bottom of the main pages. Or go to /Download/ Bulletins Most bulletins are now terminated for the season. When they begin in the fall or early winter we will debug and update all of the web-posting scripts and mailing lists systems so that we can continue to provide the best service possible. Thanks to the many avalanche centers who have worked directly with us to get this information out to you. This is basically everyone in North America with the exception of the Northwest Avalanche Center, Utah, Colorado, and the Canadian Centre. Yes, these are the largest ones with the most generous funding (interesting, isn't it?), but being only four in number they are a minority of the bulletins being issued. And we still get their info out to you, we just have to work a bit harder on these bulletins. Our mailing list distribution system for avalanche bulletins was improved this year with an upgrade to a new version of Majordomo. After much work reconfiguring all the lists things are working pretty well, and a couple new features have simplified the task of managing almost 2000 subscribers. Education There are a few new links to educational resources on the net. Incidents We are continuing to update this section. Spring is here, but that doesn't mean avalanche season is over. Stay alert and recreate safely so we aren't adding you to this section. Other Cool Stuff The stories of involvements and the news stories have been updated. The files have been moved around, so if you have a pointer directly to any of these please check it. The html and page design has been brought up to date for each of these files as well. The links section has been updated a bit, although there is always more to do in this area. Professional Resources We've gone through this entire section and checked links, reorganized a bit, and brought the html and page design up to current standards. Some new info on Liability and Lawsuits and on Laws, as well as few other small things added. That's what is new on the web and with the project. Please visit us, please bookmark us, and please stay safe out there. Avalanche season isn't over yet.