ABSTRACT
The mountain looks peaceful covered in a blanket of white show. Tops of trees pokes through the white and cold blue skies glow overhead. It looks like the perfect day to start an avalanche. The rangers carefully select the spot on the mountain. They have years of training and can spot the small cracks in the ice and snow that indicate an avalanche might happen. Their objective is to start the avalanche on purpose. Avalanche hunters are trained by the US Forest Service and usually ski into an area to examine its safety. They may plant explosives and then blow them up remotely, or sometimes they are able to use a pneumatic gun to actually shoot the snow and cause the avalanche from a distance. The practice of starting controlled avalanches was pioneered by forester Montgomery Meigs Atwater. As a forest ranger in the 1940s, he established the first avalanche research center in the Western Hemisphere.
