Dave Hamre

After a year on the ski patrol, Hamre was awarded the new position of Snow Safety Director at Alta, UT, in 1972.  He was then 20 years old. After 5 years at Alta, he set his sights farther north, first with a year in Canada and then a move to Alyeska Resort, Alaska, in the fall of 1977 as the Snow Safety Director. The demand for avalanche consulting work caused him to decide to leave Alyeska Resort in 1982.  Avalanche consulting work has ensued in some form since then.

In 1985, Hamre began work as an employee of the Alaska Railroad, where he was the Avalanche Program Manager. This work required a full-time, seasonal effort at first and turned into a full-time, year-round position in 1996 with the addition of more complicated and demanding infrastructure related to avalanches. At the railroad, he was engaged in the development of projects with an emphasis on avalanches, the development of technologies suitable for avalanche risk reduction, and managing an artillery-based risk reduction program.  There were also ample opportunities to engage in avalanche consulting work during his entire 37 years at the railroad.

A full resume of his experience is available on request. It includes the creation of numerous avalanche risk mitigation programs, original research into slush flow avalanches, development of structural avalanche defenses, development of weather stations and avalanche detection systems, calculating avalanche risk for highways, analysis of alternatives to artillery for avalanche risk reduction, and many other tasks. He has presented papers at the International Snow Science Workshop many times and sat on the Steering Committee for the 2012 event. The list of clients included other railroads, highway departments, mines, ski areas, and pipelines. He also managed numerous mountain construction projects from 1980 to 1995, when he began managing construction projects for the Alaska Railroad.