Dt1

FYI, Snow Water Equivalent is a measure of the amount of water contained within the snowpack. You can think of it as the depth of water that would result if you melted the snowpack. When you see SWE reported at 38% of average you know that one of two things--or more likely some combination of these two things--is true: 1)the depth of the accumulated snowpack is below normal, or; 2)the water content of the snow is below normal, that is, the snowpack is made up of relatively dry snow. Precipitation accumulation tracks the total precipitation received at a monitoring site, for example if the first big snow storm of the water year dumps 53" of snow on Paradise, the SWE of that snow is 25.5", and SNOTEL reports the precipitation accumulation is 65.5" you would know that in addition to the 25.5" SWE Paradise had just received, it had also received 40" (65.5-25.5) of rain previous to the first snow. Precipitation data is of course reported on a "water year" basis(Oct 1st - Sept 30th of the following calendar yr).

Phenomenal pics! What camera did you use?

Exped Polaris, 2 person, 4 season, single walled tent for sale. A very high quality tent in perfect condition. Check out the Exped you tube videos showing Polaris features and so on. $400, can meet you somewhere in the Treasure Valley, Idaho. Will also ship, you pay shipping.

Thanks, dberdinka, I sure appreciate your advice and will positively go out with an experienced climber when I do go out. Right now I'm getting excited about trying the sport and anxious for spring, and doing too much thinking about things I don't know enough about to even know how to begin thinking about them!

Where a person intends to hike up the backside to put in &remove anchors and is doing laps solo with a doubled top rope, is there any reason why it wouldn't be a good idea to tie a knot on each side of the mid-point of your rope--maybe two figures of eight on bights--and clip the bights into your anchor instead of simply threading the rope through the anchor? Seems like having something like a microtraxion on the side of the rope you're using as the primary rope backed up with another on what you're using as your secondary rope would be no help at all if either side/half of your rope failed. Again, talking only of sits where you hike up to the anchors--no chance you will need to pull ropes from below. Thanks.