Re: [pct-l] Snow-y-go-round.

[Bighummel@aol.com]

Okay, Will, so you are in deep snow in the Northern Sierra.  I don't know 
your experience with snow and how comfortable with hiking in it you are.  
Similarly, if you, yes you on the list, are not comfortable, capable, 
equipped for and mentally prepared for a late spring storm, then you 
shouldn't be anywhere Kennedy Mdws right now either.  

Will, you are sitting on a good empirical point of data that you are 
extrapolating over a very large area.  I am a scientist by training and this 
is equivalent to assuming that the information you have just culled from 
drilling an oil well can be extrapolated over a large area.  This kind of 
assumption generally causes dry holes to be drilled.  

So, as a scientist, I look for all of the data that I can find.  Thus the 
California snow survey data, your data and the over flight observations all 
taken together should give the most accurate current information without 
knowing what large, late spring storm may dump and reverse the whole picture. 
 

The California snow survey data shows the following:

Upper Tyndall Creek at 11,500 feet elevation, near Forrester Pass currently 
is showing approx. 18 inches of water content.  Assuming two inches of snow 
for every inch of water content (reasonable, but still an assumption) this 
means about 42 inches of snow is there!  Now that IS a lot of snow.  However, 
the chart also shows some other information.  In the last 5 days there has 
been a straight line steep decline of 3 inches of water content.  If you 
extrapolate this decline to zero water content (ie. no snow) it will take 30 
days.  Will it take a hiker 30 days to walk from Kennedy Mdws to Upper 
Tyndall Creek?  Probably not, but then he doesn't need all of the snow melted 
off in order to travel at a good pace either.   So if 10 inches of snow is 
the maximum acceptable (another assumption) then it is only 22 days away.  

But, you say, what about points to the South and impeding this fictional 
hiker's progress?  Crabtree station, at 10,700 feet elevation, shows 8.5 
inches water content currently and a steep, increasing decline that has also 
cut 3.5 inches of water content in the last 5 days.  Projecting this to zero 
water content gives only 14 days; to ten inches of snow in only 5 days!

Tunnel Guard Ranger Station has had no snow since April 22nd.  If I were at 
Kennedy Mdws right now (as I was in 1977, even though there wasn't anything 
there then and the temporary trail was to the West a bit) and knew this 
information and was prepared with equipment and mentally to sit or walk out 
of a late spring storm, I would head out NOW.  

In my humble, fading and delirious opinion.  ( and Brian, I thought YOU were 
anal, well I guess I did the engineering thing on this one!)

Greg "Strider" Hummel

(damn, I'm bored.  Don't I have anything better to do?)
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