It's surprising how much information Ms. Woodlief was able to recover about this event almost 30 years again in a pre-Internet, pre-cell phone era. People involved in the calamity were helpless to save themselves. Her description of what happens to a person caught in an avalanche was harrowing. Note on the binding: the paper covers refuse to stay flat, very annoying. ( )

A Wall of White tells the story of the massive avalanche that occurred at Alpine Meadows ski resort near Lake Tahoe, California, in 1982. I remember following the news stories of the avalanche and the subsequent rescue efforts, so I was very eager to read this book, and I wasn’t disappointed.

The story gets off to a slow start, as Woodlief describes the large cast of characters. As other reviewers have commented, a key to the characters would have been helpful. I found myself becoming a bit annoyed by the laudatory bios of those who would be lost in the avalanche - they read like something one might recite at a funeral, rather than fully developed portraits - and by the much sketchier bios of those who would survive.

Suspense builds as the storm develops and the ski patrollers work under desperate conditions, in a futile effort to control the snow buildup on hazardous slopes. We follow the employees and guests of Alpine Meadows as they make decisions that seem inconsequential, but ultimately make the difference between life and death. Finally, the story covers the post-avalanche rescue and recovery efforts by employees, rescue dogs, and eventually volunteers responding from outside.

Woodlief provides credible descriptions of the destructive forces of avalanches, and the technical aspects of avalanche forecasting and mitigation. The narrative and photos evoke the times and the unique subculture among the Alpine Meadows employees. She emphasizes how the limited communications of the day (no cell phones! no text messages!) affected the initial assessment and the flow of information to survivors and potential rescuers.

I would have liked a good topo map of the area. Only one map is provided; it appears to be a simplified handout used to identify the various ski runs, and is so small as to be unreadable.

The most notable omission in this book was the failure to discuss the hubris of developing a ski resort in an area where the ski runs, the base facilities, and even the access road are in a Class A avalanche zone. The topo map on Google Maps shows the base area surrounded by steep slopes on 3 sides. With prevailing west winds during the winter, those ridges must build up some huge cornices. After the 1982 disaster, the resort added one category to the avalanche control plan, calling for complete evacuation of the resort under extreme avalanche hazard conditions.

For those interested in more details, a summary of the evidence from the subsequent trial can be found here; a 25 year commemorative video here, and a map of the Alpine Meadows resort as it exists today here. ( )

Despite the draw of the disaster, A Wall of White provided more of a catalog of the people present and impacted by the 1982 Alpine Meadows avalanche than a telling of the event itself. Woodlief’s narrative bogged down early with deep backstories on an unwieldy array of resort staff and visitors. As the chapters continued, the story of the avalanche and the rescues that followed was increasingly engaging and a worthy tribute to those involved. ( )

Like watching heavy snow fall, "A Wall of White" by Jennifer Woodlief inexorably builds, flake by flake and sentence by sentence, towards the tragedy that unfolded at Alpine Meadows California in 1982 when a catastrophic avalanche obliterated much of the mountain’s ski area base. The sense of doom is almost suffocatingly palpable, as Woodlief introduces us to, and makes us care about, the people who would be caught up in that day’s events. She also does an exemplary job of explaining snow science and avalanche control to the layman.

Stylistically, Woodlief’s book almost feels as if snow is accumulating. You have the urge to run away before it slides, but can’t escape what you already know will be disaster. And, as always, you can’t help but ponder fate, and the seemingly inconsequential acts that, in review, marked a narrow ridge between life and death.

If I had one difficulty, it was that the (necessarily) large number of individuals involved was somewhat confusing, and ultimately, I couldn’t place several of them, including the person whose survival made national headlines – a story that I still recall, well over 25 years later. Part of that may have been my inability to put the book down – I rushed through the pages to see what would happen next.

Bottom line: "A Wall of White" is extremely well-written. How Woodlief untangled complex, chaotic events and wove them into a fascinating, coherent story is a testament to her writing prowess, and a tribute to the unforgettable people involved in this tragedy. Highly recommended! ( )

Wonderful book. Author did an amazing job of weaving character discriptions with the history of Alpine Meadows and the tradgedy of the avalanche. ( )