Hasty Pit

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Compression Test for Snow Stability

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1. Dig your hasty snow pit.
2. Isolate a shovel's width column of snow out of a wall of the pit.
3. Cutting both sides and behind the column to the bottom of the pit.
4. The shovel blade is placed flat on top of the column.
5. The blade is manualy tapped to test for shear failure in the isolated column.
6. The tapping force increases until shear failure occurs.
7. There are three levels. At each level you tap the shovel blade firmly with the flat of your open hand up to ten times. If no failure occurrs move up to the next level by changing your tapping arm position.
   1. Strike only with your hand flexed at the wrist (Easy Failure).
   2. Strike with your lower arm extended straight from the elbow (Moderate Failure).
   3. Strike with your full arm extended straight from the shoulder (Hard Failure).
8. Note the level and number of taps at failure.
9. This method provides numbers that can be readily compared between hasty pits at different times and sites.

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Paper presented at the 1996 International Snow Science Workshop, Banff, Alberta Canada.
Bruce Jamieson and Colin Johnston
University of Calgary, Calgary Alberta jbjamies@acs.ucalgary.ca
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