A Spring Update from the Avalanche Center (www.csac.org)
May 14, 2001

As the season winds down we would like to mention a few things we have
done over the past couple months, a few things we plan to be working on
over the next few weeks and some resources related to spring and summer
avalanche hazards. We also have a limited number of items from our store
to liquidate for summer and as a subscriber to our list we are pleased
to give you some advance notice before posting the sale on the website
pages.

Clearance Sale

We always end up with a few items in the spring which we do not wish to
keep on our shelves for the next six months. There are several beacons,
four shovels and six probes as well as a snow study kit and the new and
popular CSAC Nalgene Bottles. Prices are approximately 30% off. For a list
of items and prices please visit:

http://www.avalanche-center.org/store/sale.html

This page will be linked into the home page within another week or so, but
for now it has only been announced here. We will try to keep it up to date
as the items sell. We may lower some prices further as needed, but in most
cases we have just one in stock. So if you wait you may save a couple more
bucks, or you may miss out.

Purchasing our clearance items is a chance to get a good price, to help
the avalanche center, and especially to help us convert our last inventory
into funds to help pay our bills until next winter. While the snow goes
away we have plenty to continue working on (and we get some use from the
Southern Hemisphere). But we have no real opportunity to raise funds to
cover the fixed monthly costs which also continue.

Recent Developments

Over the past weeks we have done a number of things. We just recently
updated all the bulletins posted to include a reference at the top of the
page to the fact that they are no longer being issued/updated and to refer
people to our materials on spring and summer avalanche hazards which are
in our Education section. We have left the final bulletins in place
following this notice at the top. Most final bulletins discuss spring and
summer hazards. Many themes are recurrent, but reinforcement isn't a bad
thing. The topics get presented differently and in some cases with a local
angle to them. So if you plan to continue skiing and climbing you may wish
to spend some time reviewing the final bulletins in general as well as our
files on spring/summer hazards.

We have done some final updating to the Incidents section. A few weeks ago
we brought all incidents in Canada up to date, including links to the
bulletin in effect at the time. The CSAC Canada table (see 
http://www.avalanche-center.org/Canada/) was brought up to date as well. The other
night we added all of the fatal incidents for Switzerland for the season
to our tables. These are not linked to archived bulletins yet, but will be
soon. While there are some clean-up tasks to complete with our incidents
section it should now be fully up to date.

A few weeks ago we received a first hand account from a person involved in
a nearly fatal spring (April) incident near Field, British Columbia, last 
year. His account has been added to the "First Hand Accounts" in the
"Other" section (see http://www.avalanche-center.org/Other/). Matt was anxious to
share his thoughts and experience with others for the common good - we are
glad to help with this and appreciate his interest in helping others learn
from his experience.

One final new project has been implemented even though it needs further
work for next season. This is a new collaboration called the "Avalanche
Zone". It started out as a webring idea but grew to incorporate a common
search engine as well. Member sites have material of common/public
interest and a single search will span these sites but not include any
others. The logo and search box are on our home page now. We are still
trying to get a couple of the participating sites to add the search code
to their home pages, and we are still working with at least one potential
member site while they overcome some server and scripting problems. There
should be other sites included by next fall once they finish adding enough
content to their websites. (It has it's own domain -
http://www.avalanche-zone.com/)

Right now we are working on a new issue of "The Avalanche Gazette" which
will hopefully be released in a week or two. In addition to that there is
always a lot of maintenance work following the busy season - archiving
bulletins offline, cleaning up links and headers and titles, etc. (You can
find the Gazette in the "Other" section - http://www.avalanche-center.org/Other/)

Near the top of our list at the moment is the Avalanche Store. While we
would prefer to spend all our time on content the store is an essential
component of covering our costs. If time invested (including that which
involves various professional skills) is included the project runs at a
huge loss. However, with all time being donated it does manage to pay its
other real costs. Barely. Improvements to the store which we hope will
improve sales include product page modifications for better indexing of
each product and the implementation of a shopping cart system of some
kind.

A Brief Review of the past Season

We implemented and attempted several new projects this year, with varying
success.

We set up an online raffle and gave away a few shirts and one avalanche
beacon. This was not widely used, participation was disappointing. Next
season we will either use this on limited occassions such as in
conjunction with our fall fundraising auction or we will abandon it. We
would be happy to raffle off more items if interest increases, but our
feeling right now is that it will not.

One of our highly successful projects this season was the introduction of
our new online publication called "The Avalanche Gazette". This has been
popular and feedback on the first two issues has been entirely positive.
The third issue is currently in the works. Watch for this to continue next
season, and probably even during the summer with an issue including a few
things from the southern hemisphere if we can manage that.

We attempted to promote the idea of a worldwide week of Avalanche 
Awareness in February. Our problem this year was that we were just spread
too thin at that time and couldn't promote it adequately on our own. We
would like to think that this idea holds promise for the future,
especially if we can involve others so that the entire burden is not on
our own very small and unpaid staff.

Finally, we have worked at introducing the new Avalanche Zone
(http://www.avalanche-zone.com/). This has gone much slower than
originally hoped but is finally coming along and shows promise for the
future. Its success depends on the participation of those sites which
have avalanche related content of general interest. Not all such sites
have shown interest in the idea and some who have shown interest have been
extremely slow to follow through. But it appears that these shortcomongs
will be overcome with time.

Center Funding

Paying for this service continues to be a struggle, although we are
continuing to cover all non-labor costs such as running an office,
computer resources, etc. Our funds come from a variety of sources. The
largest is user contributions, and we thank everyone who believes in
avalanche safety enough to support the cause. Our average contribution is
small but it all adds up. Another revenue source is sponsorships, which
have been more or less flat since we began. Industry simply has not shown
an interest in supporting avalanche safety through financial sponsorships.
If you appreciate the support which is provided then please thank the
companies which do sponsor our work 
(http://www.avalanche-center.org/Organization/sponsors/). Other income is from our
store and our fall fundraising auction, which attracts more industry
support than sponsorships do (in participation, not dollars).

One of the things we will working on over the summer is funding, so that
we may continue to serve the public at our current level with the
resources developed over the past six years. As a minimum. We have some
tentative plans for major new projects if we can find a way to pay for
them.

Have a safe summer

As things wind down we may issue another update in a couple weeks, and
over the summer we sometimes send one out. But things will be relatively
quiet until the fall now. We wish everyone a safe and enjoyable spring and
summer. And for those in the southern hemisphere (or travelling there) we
do keep the site running year round and update it with anything relevant
that does come in.

Jim