Ian McCammon
Avalanche Researcher
It’s hard to imagine that standing knee-deep
in a snow pit looking at snow stability has anything
to do with robotics or aerospace design. But for NOLS
Instructor Ian McCammon, who has a Ph.D. in mechanical
engineering, the two kinds of research are surprisingly
similar. At the University of Utah, during what McCammon
calls his “former life,” he designed sensory
systems for robotics and aerospace systems for organizations
like NASA and the Department of Defense.
Before long, McCammon, who grew up skiing back East,
was drawn to a different kind of science—the
white, fluffy variety. “My engineering background
gave me an appreciation for the scientific end of
snow science,” McCammon says. “Things
like snow mechanics and metamorphosis. I bring the
tools of classical engineering to snow science.”
As McCammon shifted his engineering background from
space to snow—and began to spend more and more
time in the winter backcountry with NOLS students—the
science of snow continually intrigued him. “For
me, snow is a fascinating material just in how complex
it is. It’s full of mystery.” Part of
this complexity, says McCammon, is how relatively
new snow science is. According to McCammon, people
have only been studying snow since the ’40s
and ’50s, and it doesn’t get a lot of
funding so it doesn’t advance quickly. It’s
also vastly different from anything else in the scientific
field. “It’s a very exciting new world,”
he says. “Most of our science and math have
been developed for matter that is far from its melting
point. But with snow we’re trying to analyze
something that’s near its melting point.”
McCammon has also begun to construct in his mind
some trends in how people think about snow. In between
NOLS courses, he now spends much of his time looking
at how people make decisions in risky situations.
Along with a private engineering consulting business,
McCammon passes his findings on to other snow scientists
at conferences and seminars around the country.
He has started Snowpit Technologies, his own project
that focuses on avalanche education, high risk decision
making, and how fracture mechanics apply to snow stability.
Sound complicated? McCammon gets into the complexities
of snow, but he also wants it to make sense to the
non-scientists out there. “Some people come
to avalanche courses wanting to know all the gory
details about snow science,” he admits. “But
some of them are taking it because they want to avoid
the hazards, and that’s simple to teach. There
are a handful of clues that you can base your decisions
on—you don’t need any science background
for that.”
When it comes down to it, McCammon’s explanation
for why he likes snow is surprisingly simple considering
his background “I like snow because it’s
fun to play in, and because it teaches us about ourselves,”
he says. While McCammon says he goes through phases—he’s
had his robotics phase and is now deep into his snow
science phase—McCammon doesn’t think he’ll
tire of snow for awhile. “During the winter,”
he says, “things are stripped down to their
basics; things are very simple but very complex at
the same time. Snow is just so complex it never ceases
to amaze me.”
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NOLS
Snow Scientists
