Jill Fredston

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Jill Fredston, former co-director of the Alaska Mountain Safety Center, is one of North America's leading avalanche experts. She has spent decades predicting avalanches, triggering them with explosives, teaching potential victims how to stay alive, and leading rescue efforts in Alaska. Then, every summer, she climbs into an ocean-going rowing shell and heads out on long expeditions in the Arctic and sub-Arctic. With her husband, Doug Fesler, in a small boat of his own, she has rowed the equivalent of the circumference of the earth-more than 25,000 miles along the rugged coasts of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Spitsbergen, and Norway. Jill's most recent book, Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches is a brilliant look at the forces of human nature that lure us time and again into treacherous terrain. She is also the author of Rowing to Latitude: Journeys along the Arctic's Edge, which won the 2002 National Outdoor Book Award. With Doug Fesler, she co-wrote the authoritative and internationally acclaimed Snow Sense: A Guide to Evaluating Snow Avalanche Hazard.

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14 years 26 weeks