Experienced backcountry skiers know the sound. It originates deep beneath the snow and resonates through your body, spreading like dread.

WHUMP!

It's the sound of nature removing the linchpin that kept the thousands of tons of snow beneath your skis from sliding down the mountainside. It's the sound of a weak layer breaking.

Montana State University engineering mechanics professor Ed Adams has heard that sound and knows the terror of seeing the snow fracture beneath his skis. Not every whump is followed by an avalanche, Adams said, but it's a powerful warning.

Adams is one of the world's leading avalanche researchers. In addition to the papers he has published, Adams has appeared on national television programs such as Good Morning America and has been featured in such magazines as National Geographic Adventure. He's well-known for his avalanche research methods, which involve a snow-laden hillside, a scientist-filled shack bolted to the slope and some explosives to get things moving.

Adams is also one of a growing number of researchers at MSU who study snow, cold and ice. Cold regions research, otherwise known as cold science, began at MSU just after World War II, when men like Charles Bradley and John Montagne joined the faculty. These soldiers-turned-scientists brought with them intimate knowledge of using avalanches as weapons and a passion for snow, ice and mountains.

Bradley, Montagne and others—in addition to helping found the area's highly successful ski industry—turned the mountains into classrooms, capitalizing on the area's surplus snow and ice and establishing a tradition of internationally recognized snow science work at MSU.

The cold proved a popular subject, attracting students from across the country. Before long, cold science expanded beyond its home in earth sciences, taking root in departments across campus, from engineering to microbiology.

Today, researchers continue to use MSU's surrounding natural laboratory to study everything from the physics of avalanches and global warming to the origins of life on earth—or elsewhere. And when Montana isn't cold enough, those researchers head for places like Antarctica and Alaska, their work boosting the university's reputation as home to some of the world's best cold scientists.

This fall the university opened its new Subzero Science and Engineering Research Facility, in Cobleigh Hall, a one-of-a-kind, 2,700-square-foot complex of cold chambers and equipment. The lab will benefit the university's resident experts, who already have carved careers out of snow and ice, allowing them to take their work to a new level and solidifying MSU's place in the global cold science community.

Taylor Valley, Antarctica, with the Rhone Glacier. Photo courtesy of Mark Skidmore and Scott Montross.

Return to regular view	Text-only              Email this article	Published: 11/24/2008