Hasty Pit

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StuffBlock test in a hasty pit
  1. You will need a nylon stuff sack, a shovel, a scale and a folding rule.
  2. Dig your hasty snow pit.
  3. Isolate a shovel's width column of snow out of a wall of the pit.
  4. Cutting both sides and behind the column to the bottom of the pit.
  5. Use the scale to fill the stuff sack with 10 lbs of snow.
  6. The shovel blade is placed on top of the column.
  7. The stuff sack is first placed, then dropped onto the shovel blade from increasing heights.
  8. The drop height is increased in increments of 0.10 m. until shear failure occurs.
  9. Note the drop height.
  10. This method is inexpensive, quick, easy, and provides numbers that can be readily compared between observers.
Paper presented at the 1994 International Snow Science Workshop, Snowbird, Utah.
Ron Johnson and Karl Birkeland
Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center, P.O. Box 130, Bozeman, MT 59771
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