Rescuers digging at the site of the Summit Terminal Building. Photo courtesy of Larry Heywood.

An Interview with Author Jennifer Woodlief

How did you stumble into this story?
Woodlief: I wrote Ski to Die, a book about Bill Johnson. For that, I interviewed Robert “Fro” Frohlich, a Tahoe writer and we kept in touch afterward. On the 24th anniversary of the 1982 avalanche in 2006, he brought it up. I couldn’t believe nobody had written a book or done a movie about it. Fro introduced me to the sources, and that helped with credibility. There’s some level of suspicion of outsiders. People wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to exploit what happened or make it sensational. It helped to have that credibility.