| It's not easy for getting around but last year was pretty dry and we didn't have much of a snowpack. |
| Helicopters are used to access remote areas to measure the snowpack for comparison with satellite data. |
| In these slides, a broad area of snowpack breaks away and begins moving downhill as a cohesive mass riding over an ice sheet or bare ground. |
| The surface is mushy in places, icy and unyielding in others, and higher up there are rock chutes and faces protruding through the snowpack. |
| An avalanche forecaster ferrets out a dangerous weakness in the snowpack with the shovel shear test. |
| The measure follows four years of severe drought and its lowest ever recorded winter snowpack. |
