Update November 12, 1997 Cyberspace Snow and Avalanche Center http://www.csac.org Jim Frankenfield, Director Welcome Resources Please Help Thanks to New on the Website Welcome to the 1997-98 Avalanche Season --------------------------------------- It's about that time once again! Wax those skis and boards and tune up those snow machines - and don't forget the new batteries for the avalanche beacon and a bit of practice as well. As we enter our fourth season of bringing avalanche information and education to the internet we would like to wish everyone a fun and safe winter. This is the first update since March and is a couple months later than we had hoped. I've been busier than usual guiding this fall, and more recently with computer problems and the PERL scripts behind the scene which keep everything running. CSAC Resources -------------- Our most obvious and best known resource is our web site - http://www.csac.org The web site, however, is only one part of what we do. It is the most visible, but we also: - Distribute bulletins to over 1200 addresses via listserver - Operate a retail store online as a fundraising endeavor - Do a significant amount of PERL and shell scripting to keep things all working (Bulletin updating, archiving and mailing and nightly and monthly resource usage stat reports, especially) - Answer numerous questions. We answer 95% or more of our mail, even if we sometimes get behind. Many questions come from the media, from students, from teachers, and from anyone else with questions or needing advice. People often tell us that the only response they got was ours. Please Help ----------- Keeping this going is quite a job, and we can use your help. Please contribute if you use the site and can. After four years of running this with few or no dedicated computer resources we've gone out on a limb and purchased a basic desktop computer for our office. We'll still need to do a lot of scavenging of time on other folks machines, but less than we used to. On the other hand, the one notebook computer we already own died and took the Hard Drive with it and we have had some expenses related to that. Contributions from users are really essential to pay for the minimal resources we do have. There is also a lot of work involved, and volunteers are always welcome if they are dedicated and reliable. One thing anyone can do right now, this time of year, is get some paper bookmarks out on the counter of your local shop. This lets others know about the resources we provide. If you can put some in one or more local shops (climbing, skiing, snowmobiling, ...) send us an email with your address and we'll mail some to you. We would like to get them into shops, university outdoor programs offices, parks and forest service offices, and even trailheads. Thanks to ... ------------- Many thanks to a few folks who do more than their share to keep this project running - Our Board of Directors includes Jeff Clarke and Andy Bower in addition to myself. Dale Hubbard has helped out regularly over the past year or more as well. Many others have helped by sending us news and content and helping promote the site - thanks to all you, too numerous to list. Alpengroup, and Phil Caterino in particular, in the Tahoe area deserve a big thanks for actively helping out in many ways. Our sponsors are extremely important since they provide most of what operating money we do have. Marmot, Life-Link, and TransWorld Snowboarding publications have all renewed their support. We have one new sponsor - skinet.com - the website for Ski and Skiing Magazines. Welcome! We are still hoping to see a few more get onboard but with the season getting underway it's hard to follow up on or promote sponsorships at this time. There are some other organizations which help in various ways. For a list of who they are, including cooperating avalanche centers, see our Avalanche Network which is accessible from any section page. Whats New --------- We've done quite a bit of work since March (our last update) and I won't remember it all. So check out the site for yourself! However, among the changes are: Store: We are now offering a much wider selection of avalanche safety products - 3 of the 4 major beacon brands, numerous models of sectional probe poles and shovels, ski/probe poles, and more. Check it out! Buy your favorite partner a big shovel for a holiday gift :) Bulletins: Current bulletins posted on our site will now be glossed - linked to the new glossary in our Education section. This process will improve as the season gets underway, but we are excited about using this method to help people better interpret the bulletins and learn the jargon. The phonelist page and the maillist page have been brought up to date, to the best of our knowledge. Archived bulletins for previous years are now available only as gzipped tar files except for those linked to from an Incident report. Education: The main Education page has been redesigned with better organization and layout. We now have a glossary of avalanche related terms online. It has been scanned in from various sources and we are not happy with some of the definitions so we will be rewriting most of the entries as quickly as time permits. The directories for the 1997-98 course listings are in place and some entries have been added already. (Utah, Colorado, Oregon, Wash at least). Incidents: Nothing new in this section, really. Last years incidents have been moved into a different directory and this years list appears on the main page now. Hopefully it will stay short. It probably won't. Other Cool Stuff: We have started a new section with avalanche statistics which has some useful stuff in it already, but much more will follow when we have the time. A few new pictures have been added to the index. And the annual report for the SW Montana Gallatin NF avalanche center is online. We hope to add the reports from other major US centers at some point. Professional Resources: No significant changes. Misc: Many, but not all, pages have been checked with lynx as well as Netscape to be sure they are compatible with text browsers. The use of the javascript tag showing the last modified date has been largely eliminated since it was causing problems for some browsers. It remains primarily on items such as avalanche bulletins where the date modified is important. If you find any pages which are not compatible with your browser please let us know (include the page, the platform (type of machine) you have, browser program and version, and description of problem). The project continues to grow. We hope you are finding it to be a valuable resource and will continue to visit often! Jim