Lots of emphasis on the 1999 accident and "how far we've come."  Would seem appropriate to provide some results in the story.  User days?  Fatalities per user day in the past 5, 10 years?  

Before the center was formed, some professional Avalanche educators here were of the opinion that a forecasting system would be detrimental by cultivating a user base of dependency, and we'd end up with more people who knew less about assessing things themselves. In other words, more people in dangerous situations who know less about on-site assessments. 

I don't know if that's legit or not, but it seems a useful issue to follow up on in articles like this, and certainly an assessment the Forest Service should be looking at: is our program reducing accidents in the backcountry?