[pct-l] Snow

[Eric Lee (GAMES)]

Bamboo Bob wrote:
>
After reading about snow conditions I'm a bit puzzled.  Is a lot of snow in the mountains a southern California "lot" by people who are not used to snow or an actual lot. Could someone from say Minnesota or Maine or Alaska or someplace that has big snow and done the PCT maybe make a comparison.  I had nine feet of snow outside my door in Vermont last winter and a lot of it was still there in April. But I could walk on it and used Yaktrax on the icy driveway.
>

In this case, "a lot of snow" is referring to the amount of the trail that's under snow, not necessarily to the depth of the snowpack.  Snow is snow, whether it's one foot deep or ten feet deep.

There are four problems with snow on the trail:

1.  Navigation is much more challenging if you can't see the trail.  You have to have good maps and be very experienced with reading them.  A GPS helps but as a wise man once said, "Don't stake your life on anything that uses batteries."

2.  Your walking speed is typically a lot slower on snow than it is on dirt.  That changes all the equations of where you need to get supplies and whether you can get from point A to point B with what you can carry with you.

3.  Certain roads, stores, and resorts that you'd typically depend on for resupply may be still closed if there's a lot of snow around.

4.  The trail runs up, down, and along a lot of steep mountainsides.  In some areas the trail can be little more than a ledge chiseled out of a cliff.  If the trail is covered with snow in a steep area, then any little fall can prove to be instantly fatal.  This is particularly a concern in SoCal because the snow they get in the mountains down there tends to warm up, melt a little, then freeze up again and get really hard and slick.

Eric