Bruce Tremper, Salt Lake City, UT: an interview by and John Worsencroft, 1 October 2008

Transcript (48 pages) of interview by and John Worsencroft with Bruce Tremper on October 1, 2008

Tremper (b. 1953) grew up in a large Catholic outdoorsy family in Missoula, Montana. His father was a working class businessman and his mother was an academic. Bruce was a ski racer for the University of Montana, was on the Junior National Ski Team for three years and the US Ski Team Talent Squad until he decided that he could not continue for financial reasons. In college he worked trail maintenance every summer for Glacier National Park. He got his degree in Geology and joined the Ski Patrol at Bridger Bowl, where he first started working with avalanches. He later studied with John Montagne, who he credits as a huge life influence. Tremper started the Utah Avalanche Center and works on how to give people the avalanche information they need in a simple and straightforward way. He thinks that the human influence in avalanches needs to be acknowledged and that having a system is the only way to stay safe. Each avalanche is the same story, different person. He wrote a book called Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain. Interview is part of the Outdoor Recreation Oral History Project. Interviewer: John Worsencroft