A TELESCOPIC snow probe stuffed with electronics could soon be helping ski guides decide whether off-piste slopes are safe for skiing.
The probe is being developed by the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research in Davos and is being tested in the US, India and Austria as well as in Switzerland. And Jerome Johnson, a geophysicist with the US army鈥檚 Cold Regions Research Laboratory in New Hampshire, is already convinced the technology will be standard issue for avalanche warning centres.
Avalanches are produced by combinations of weather, terrain, and snow type. When snow falls on ice layers or layers of loose, granular snow, for example, it can create giant, unstable slabs that later crash down the slopes.
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Ski guides currently have to dig metre-deep cross-sections in a snow field to check visually for these unstable layers. Various techniques are used to assess each layer鈥檚 strength, including poking fingers, fists or knife blades into the snow at different depths, and even jumping on the edge of the pit to see how easily it gives way.
But digging a hole takes at least half an hour, and results are subjective. What鈥檚 more, the hardness tests can miss layers that are thinner than a finger, and things might be totally different just a dozen metres away.
The Swiss group鈥檚 new snow micropenetrometer is a telescopic metal probe, a few millimetres wide at the tip, that is driven into the snow at about 2 centimetres per second by a motor housed in a small box. An LCD on the box displays a reading of the physical resistance encountered every 4 micrometres by a pressure sensor on the probe鈥檚 tip.
The gadget produces a detailed profile of how the snow hardness varies with depth, and it lets inspectors probe 2 metres of snow in just a few minutes. This means many more sites can be tested. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really useful information,鈥� says Karl Birkeland, who is testing the device at the US Forest Service National Avalanche Center in Montana.
Before the device can be put to full use, researchers will have to learn how to interpret whether a given profile is actually dangerous. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 where all the research is focused right now,鈥� says Johnson.
