Mountain snow is the Western United States' greatest fresh water reservoir. The men and women measuring this resource in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California regularly ski across 12,000 foot passes and at night must dig into rock and log cabins for shelter. On these monthly survey trips they will often ski over 100 miles and climb and descend 25,000 to 30,000 feet along the spine of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In this actual account of a snow survey trip Armstrong covers many pertinent and practical subjects which range from safe winter travel on skis, practical avalanche assessment and avoidance, bird life and wildlife found high in the mountains in winter, cooking on and maintaining wood burning cook stoves and a short history of these surveys. It includes many humorous incidents and some deadly incidents. The Sierra Nevada snow surveyors travel through some of the most stunning mountain terrain found anywhere in the world. Winter is indeed a wild and beautiful season high in the mountains. It has its obvious dangers and it has its sublime beauties. This account attempts to transport the reader into that remote winter world. The Log of a Snow Survey Skiing and Working in a Mountain Winter World By Patrick Armstrong, Nancy Overholtz Abbott Press Copyright © 2014 Patrick Armstrong All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4582-1798-1 Contents Introduction, vii, Dedication, ix, Chapter 1: Into the Mountains, 1, Chapter 2: Of Ravens and Coyotes, 19, Chapter 3: Storm-Bound Days, 31, Chapter 4: The Work of Snow Surveying, 42, Chapter 5: The Snow Survey Cabins, 54, Chapter 6: A Brief History of Snow Surveys, 62, Chapter 7: Avalanches and X15 Pilots, 81, Chapter 8: White Birds, White Rabbits and Bonsai Trees, 97, Chapter 9: Wood-burning Cook Stoves, 104, Chapter 10: Territorial Imperative, 112, Chapter 11: Skiing Big Tall Country, 117, Chapter 12: Exact Snow Measurements and Good Fried Rice, 129, Chapter 13: The Packrat's Ancient Treasures, 138, Chapter 14: Dennis and the Super Cub, 150, Chapter 15: Working Partners, 155, Chapter 16: Kinglets, Marmots and Wildlife Humor, 160, Chapter 17: The Pass Surveys, 166, Chapter 18: Piute Pass, 168, Chapter 19: Bishop Pass, 174, Chapter 20: Kearsarge Pass, 180, Chapter 21: Forgotten Canyon, 188, Chapter 22: Ghosts of the Little Whitney Cow Camp, 196, Chapter 23: Tunnel Guard Station, 202, Chapter 24: Hot Lips Houlihan, 206, Chapter 25: The Mountain Phone Line, 212, Chapter 26: Butterflies, Pachyderms, Tomcats and Bureaucrats, 219, Chapter 27: Discord in the Field, 236, Chapter 28: Golden Trout Creek, the Tunnel and its Water War, 243, Chapter 29: Clark's Nutcrackers and American Martens, 254, Chapter 30: The Beasts at Peace, 263, Chapter 31: Endings and Beginnings, 268, Epilogue, 293, About the Author, 295, CHAPTER 1 Into the Mountains There it is again, a faint, but distinct buzz. Every time my ski-tip snaps down over a bump in the snow it makes a high-pitched buzzing sound. I remove my right ski and examine it. Wooden cross-country skis will break if stressed too much. They will break just behind the tip, where the ski is thin and supple, and just as in a fine stringed musical instrument, a buzz coming from the wood means a crack. I do not see any crack or break, this is a relief for the wind is howling across Horseshoe Meadow and to stop and make a repair would be difficult. We ski on into the blowing snow of the whiteout. After half an hour skiing head-down-into-the-wind, we reach the old cow camp log cabin at the meadow's upper end. A forest of large one-to-four-foot diameter lodgepole pine trees and glacial moraines shelter the cabin. The wind can't get to us here, but it whistles through trees on the ridge tops above. Murt Stewart, Dave Sharp and I take a break. We had spent the night before at the old sawmill snow survey cabin three miles below Horseshoe Meadow. This cabin is built on the site of an old sawmill that supplied timbers to the Cerro Gordo silver mines in the 1870s. Made of corrugated metal, the cabin is not picturesque in itself; its beauty is the view out the front door. It lies at 9,400 feet in elevation, perched in the cove of Cottonwood Creek, high on the Sierra Nevada's eastern escarpment. The escarpment in this area rises 6,000 to 11,000 feet from the Owens Valley floor in a horizontal distance of three to five miles; over 2,000 vertical feet for each horizontal mile. My two snow survey partners Murt Stewart and Dave Sharp and I ascended this escarpment the day before, hiking and skiing up from the Owens Valley. Looking out the sawmill cabin's door is a striking view of the Great Basin, with Telescope Peak above Death Valley prominent on the skyline. Range after range can be seen, like purple waves disappearing into the distance. On most days the view from the cabin door shows a myriad of these ranges extending well over 150 miles to the east out into Nevada: waves and crests, each wa