Join us for the 2025 Eastern Sierra Snow and Avalanche Workshop!

This event is free and open to the public. We would love to see you there in person.

When: November 22nd, 2025 

Where: Eagle Lodge, Mammoth Lakes

 

Schedule

Steve Mace – Director of Operations – ESAC

• Welcome 
• ESAC Operations Update
• ESAC is on the Avy App!

Clancy Nelson – Lead forecaster – ESAC

•  “SNOWPACK at ESAC: Operational Snow Cover Modeling at a Small US
  Avalanche Center

Josh Lipkowitz – Avalanche Forecaster – Flathead Avalanche Center

• The Melt Is On: What we’re learning about wet slab avalanches and what it
  means for backcountry travellers

Andy Anderson -Avalanche Forecaster -Sierra Avalanche Center

• Consider your Partners

American Avalanche Association

• Membership Update

Mike Phillips – Mammoth Mountain Ski Patrol 

• Avalanche Mitigation Techniques at Mammoth Mountain are changing…How,
  why, and what is likely to come

Greg Cunningham – Avalanche Forecaster, ESAC

• Did the Mountain Really Say No… or Yes… or Anything? – A Discussion of Risk
  Theory, Philosophy, Strategy, and Uncertainty

Dawn Johnson – NWS Reno

• NWS updates and winter outlook

 

Speaker Highlight

 

Josh Lipkowitz – 

Josh forecasts avalanches for the Flathead Avalanche Center and loves helping others explore snowy mountains safely. He earned his master’s in Earth Sciences at Montana State University, where his thesis research focused on wet slab avalanches. When the snow melts, Josh returns home to the Maine coast, where he and his wife run a youth outdoor education company and dive into endless home and land projects. He loves cooing over his 3-month-old daughter, reading, sailing, surfing, playing music, and making things out of wood and flour. He is also a licensed sea captain.   

 

 

Greg Cunningham –

Greg has nearly two decades of full-time experience on skis in the mountains, including ski area forecasting, patrolling, guiding, and personal ski mountaineering.  He couldn’t be more thrilled to bring his experience to ESAC, and looks forward to the new challenges of public forecasting in the Sierra Nevada.

 

 

Mike Phillips –

Mike is a ski patrol manager and avalanche forecaster at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area. He balances a passion for avalanche hunting at the ski area with a love for backcountry skiing in the High Sierra. Mike teaches recreational avalanche courses and dabbles with occasional ski guiding jobs locally. He has also been involved with the Eastern Sierra Avalanche Center for many years as a professional field observer, an avalanche forecaster, and as the education coordinator.

 

 

Dawn Johnson-

Dawn Johnson is the Warning Coordination Meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Reno, NV. In this position, she is the primary liaison between the NWS and core partners in emergency services, tribal entities, media, and the public for a roughly 36,000 sq mi area encompassing northwest Nevada, northeast California, and the eastern Sierra. Dawn has been with the agency since 2004, and in Reno since 2009, focusing on how we can improve forecast messaging so that users can ultimately make better-informed decisions. Outside of work,  Dawn enjoys cooking and partaking in outdoor recreation with her husband and three very active children.

 

Clancy Nelson –

Clancy grew up in Mammoth with skis on his feet. His experience with snow safety started in 2007 as a professional ski patroller for Mammoth Mountain Ski Area. He spent 9 years as an observer for ESAC before starting his forecasting career in 2016. Clancy spent 4 years in Montana worrying about deep slabs and surface hoar for the Flathead Avalanche Center before happily returning home to the East Side and ESAC. Clancy has been working as a member of the international working group, cleverly named AvaCollabra, which fosters collaboration among researchers, software developers, and avalanche forecasters to advance the development and application of snow cover models for operational avalanche forecasting. 

 

 

Andy Anderson

Andy has been a forecaster at the Sierra Avalanche Center since 2006. Andy’s past forecasting experience comes from southeast Utah where the snow is light and shallow. In previous lives, Andy has been a ski patroller in the Northwest, an English teacher in Chile, a ski bum in the Tetons (funded by flipping burgers in Jackson Hole), a climbing ranger at Rocky Mountain and Mt. Rainier national parks, and a climbing guide. When not forecasting avalanches, he spends his time running long races and trying to keep up with his wife and son on the rocks and in the backcountry. Andy spends his summers teaching technical rescue classes and playing in the mountains.