It’s been an interesting start to the snow season, with several large, early season storms that brought worry and challenge to our drilling operations at 11,500-ft in the Redwell Basin and the airborne geophysical surveys whetting our appetites for a white November. Since that time, however, we’ve had little in the way of significant snow accumulation at East River, and while it’s generally been warm in November and early December, we’ve recently experienced a very chilly albeit sunny cold snap. I suspect the frozen soil layer is thickening this year, and it will be very interesting to compare this year with last given the general absence of an insulating snow blanket.
Along these lines, I wanted to provide a virtual site visit of our Pumphouse hillslope location so folks can get a general feel of conditions there this past weekend. A new team member also makes his first appearance so there’s perhaps some motivation to hang in there while watching the video.
Also, I wanted to add our next installment of the “Meet the Scientist” series. With Dr. John Bargar, the lead PI of the SLAC SFA program, having presented a nice update of his team’s activities at East River during our last Science Community call, I thought it worthwhile to include a more “personal” presentation straight from John himself and to provide those who couldn’t join the call with a better understanding of the activities of our ”sister” National Lab SFA within the watershed.