Well not really. Or maybe there is one? Lemme ask Google real quick… huh. Turns out “Take Your Spouse to Work Day” is December 14th. Good to know. We all just learned something. Anyway. Essentially I have to work some weekends. Most of the time however if I do have to work it can be a field day. A field day, while maybe not exciting for a park rat or someone only looking for 45° couloirs, can certainly be a nice day to be outside in the snow.
Robyn getting ready to skin up Pumphouse near Berthoud Pass, CO.
Beautiful day with my beautiful wife!
Near and below treeline was creamy good powder.
Starting to get windy above treeline.
A general field day will go something like this.. Get up early, check online resources for snow conditions. Find a willing ski partner (optional). Determine gaps in our knowledge or uncertainties in our current forecast. Plan a day to the hills that targets the uncertainty so we can improve our online public safety product. Ski up there, make observations pertinent to the objective for the day. Often these objectives require a bit of digging to observe buried weak layers in the snow. We dig a “pit”, essentially an anally square hole in the snow, or as I like to refer to it as “my cubical” and then poke and prod and perform various tests to get a clearer picture of what is going on in the snowpack. The video below is an example of a snowpack test that can give us insight into whether a collapsed weak layer in the snowpack will propagate into a larger avalanche.
There isn’t an ergonomic chair and keyboard situated so I don’t have to uncomfortably kink my neck. AND I even had to dig my own cubicle! Lame.
A picture to help the public see what’s going on in the snow.
This is a pit profile. Mostly used by professionals and geeky skiers to pass a lot of info along about the snowpack. Crystal types, sizes, weak layers of concern and relative density of each layer of snow. Who knew all this was going on under your feet as you ski?
Sometimes the commute can be hairy.
Warming up after a hard day at work. Not many beers can taste as good as a Left Hand Milk Stout on nitro after a day in the snow.
When field work is all said and done I flail my way back to the car (learning to ski this season) and head back in to draw up a pit profile and summarize the day’s info into a public observation. These observations are hugely important for the forecaster back at the office who needs to quickly assimilate loads of data coming in from all over the state to put out a clear message on the avalanche danger for various zones around Colorado.