Story and Photos by John Dittli

SILENT FLAKES OF SNOW FLOAT DOWN from the blackness, dancing in the beam of our headlamps in a monochromatic kaleidoscope. A deep, narrow trench leads the way, beyond, almost absorbed by the darkness, a vague silhouette. We had been breaking trail through knee deep snow for most of the day, and now it would seem well into the night.

How long had it been since dusk? An hour? Two? Time, measured only by falling snow and laden branches, becomes irrelevant.

Twenty miles from the nearest plowed road, we look for a small cabin hidden deep in the woods, half buried in snow. At this point I’m less worried about finding the cabin than I am of the inevitable bludgeoning from a falling tree (snow) bomb. 

The shadow ahead belongs to veteran snow surveyor Jim King. Between the two of us there are 60+ years of experience skiing back in these mountains, and at least that many visits to this particular shelter. Not that we still couldn’t ski right by it in the dark. We’ve certainly had our moments wandering amiss over the years, but tonight I’m feeling lucky.

The snow crystals that fall this evening are classic dendritic stellars. Left unbroken by a breathless sky, they hang in the night like a scene from a snow globe. Such floating flakes are somewhat rare in the High Sierra. John Muir called this the “Range of Light,” but in winter it’s more typically the range of wind. By the time a Sierra snow crystal gets to the ground it usually looks more like origami gone bad than the nice symmetrical flakes we used to cut from folded paper in preschool. Tonight I’m glad for the exception.

We’ve been on this particular snow survey for ten days.  The trip has us criss-crossing the high Sierra backcountry from Cottonwood Pass, past the foot of Mt. Whitney to the Tyndall Creek benches, the headwaters of the Kern River and back. One hundred miles over a January landscape, measuring snow depth and water content so the powers that be in Sacramento can determine how much our thirsty state will be able to drink the coming summer.

In 1906, Frank Church, a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, invented the first instruments used for measuring snow water content. And like the Dinty Moore beef stew awaiting us in the cabin pantry, little has changed over the years in how snow is measured. While efforts are being made to more accurately measure snow pack through remote sensing and satellite imagery, hand measuring still provides the most accuracy.

The Mt. Rose Snow Sampler consists of a set of 30 inch long tubes that, when screwed together, exceed the depth of the snow pack. Driven through the snow to the ground, the 1.485 inch diameter tube traps a column of snow within. The tube and snow is then weighed and through a simple mathematical formula is converted to inches of water. Samples are taken along specific transects, or “snow courses,”  that have been established throughout the Sierra backcountry.

Earlier in the week while skiing across the Bighorn Plateau, we stopped at such a course among magnificent foxtail pines. An orange sign tacked eons ago to a tree 800 feet distant marks the Bighorn snow course: the highest, and arguably one of the most scenic, in the state. Here, snow samples are taken in a straight line, seven of them, 100 feet apart.

That day we measured 63 inches of snow, 21 inches of water. One hundred percent of average, the foxtails are happy. I looked out across the vast field of white to the distant peaks of the Kaweahs; if the snow were liquid there would be water knee deep over the entire landscape.  

Throughout the winter, the snow pack goes through metamorphoses: accumulation, settling, ablation (evaporation), melting, eroding (wind). We’ve measured four feet at a course in February only to find bare ground in March. Due to this dynamic, courses are measured monthly to keep a pulse on when, and how much, runoff may occur.

An army of snow surveyors from various agencies and utilities are deployed monthly to measure the hundreds of courses across the state. These measurements are then used to calculate water availability to farms, families, fish and power (not necessarily in that order). Additionally, the historic data, dating back to the 1920s, can be valuable for providing insight into climate change. But tonight as snow accumulates at a rate of a few inches an hour, global warming feels as distant as the cabin we’re looking for.

Plodding mile after mile, day after day, one’s mind may begin to wander. When asked about the job, a surveyor once replied, “you just put one foot in front of the other.” True, there is nothing heroic about the job, but it can have its moments: an after work ski of Mt. Whitney, a moonlit tour across the Siberian Outpost, coyotes fishing Golden Trout Creek, trying to find a cabin at night in a snow storm.

This night I think about past surveyors, in wool and cotton, 10 pound wooden skis on their feet, looking for the same thing we are. The ski equipment has changed, but the job is just as it was 60 years ago: the same courses, cabins, canned bread and corned beef hash. And the same pay. A friend once summed up snow surveying in California as “measuring the most valuable commodity for the world’s sixth largest economy.” $13.53 an hour never felt so important.

Through the darkness and falling snow my light catches a yellow marker in the trees: a 1947 California license plate. We are close, but the cabin is little more than a lump in the snow. After twenty minutes we have shoveled to the door, lighted lanterns, fired up the potbelly. Buckets of snow melt for water.

I relax on the bunk and open the log book, turning the pages back through time. Names of past surveyors—Doug Powell, Mert Stewart, Mead Hargis—float like ghosts from the entries. Outside the storm has intensified. “January 30, 1969  Over ten feet of new snow has fallen in the last few days. Efforts to ski out have been futile. Dug out the chimney three times today.  Wood running low...”  

I fall asleep to the whisper of the fire as the snow flakes accumulate.