Zack Wentz

Zack start­ed his guid­ing career as a climb­ing instruc­tor while com­plet­ing his degree at the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia. He stud­ied For­est Sci­ences with a focus on Snow and Avalanche Fore­cast­ing where he researched the effects of veg­e­ta­tion on snow­pack insta­bil­i­ty, which he pre­sent­ed at the 2018 Inter­na­tion­al Snow Sci­ence Work­shop. He has worked as a guide and avalanche instruc­tor across the Amer­i­can West, Cana­da, South­east­ern U.S., and Sier­ra, while his per­son­al adven­tures have tak­en around the world, includ­ing the French and Aus­tri­an Alps, New Zealand, and all over North America.

Zack aims to bal­ance guid­ing with research in avalanche fore­cast­ing and risk com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Zack enjoys con­nect­ing oth­ers to the beau­ty and lessons that the moun­tains have to offer, but seeks out big split­board­ing lines on big peaks in the best con­di­tions. He also works with the North­west Avalanche Cen­ter to pro­vide avalanche aware­ness class­es, and is engaged in improv­ing pub­lic safe­ty mes­sag­ing around avalanche risk management.