Another beautiful day in paradise. A little more high cloud (it's supposed to snow in Gothic tomorrow), but still mostly sunny, calm, and a balmy -15c.
We got an earlier start today, to the site by 9. I swapped out three more lidar USB sticks, one in pi 5 at D at 9:23 and two in the pis in UE at 9:42.
At UE the power box serial number is 206, and the dsm is 208. At C dsm cm has serial number 234, and it looked like dsm cu might have been 260, but hard to tell with a zip tie in the way. Thanks to Eli for letting us use his binoculars!
Tony looked into the power to the CSAT3BH heaters. The short answer is yes, it's getting power. I'll let him fill in the details of his investigation.
(I found that each transducer on the is getting 1.2VDC and the chassis 2.3VDC. Measurements were taken from the power box. -Tony)
We were back at Gothic by 11, with a stop back at Maroon to get Ethan's hard drive from Danny and Eli. Since we were done with site visit tasks, and since we wanted to avoid driving home in the snow tomorrow, we decided to leave today. We left Gothic at 11:45 and were back at the trailhead by 1:30. I'm now back in Boulder, and I assume Tony is as well.
We put wstar back in the Salamander room before leaving, for when the next group is looking for it.
Here's a last look at the site from the road on our way out.
The webcam at 19:51 local shows new tracks in the snow along an arc between d and c. I assume that they are from the local fox. Didn't he/she read the map of acceptable paths through the site??
mote: v2.8, id20
spare dsms: 245, 235, 232, 241
spare sht probes: 10 of them—SNs 021, 008, 106, 001, 040, 057, 069, 067, 117, 025
It's a beautiful day in Gothic! Sunny, calm, sparkling, and the warmest -10c I've ever felt.
Before we headed out to the site this morning we checked data, I formatted the new lidar USB sticks with guidance from Ethan, and we stopped by the Salamander room to get some serial numbers. As we were skiing out to the site we passed Danny and Eli coming back from digging a snow pit. At site the top of the barrel is just about level with the snowpack.
We got harnesses on and started at tower D, where Tony climbed to clean the radiometers and get the mote IDs. Radiometer cleaning at D was between around 12:05 and 12:10 local. There were two motes at the top of the tower. One was SN6 but ID was just a dash (is this the bluetooth mote for the mobile tsnows?) and the other was ID39.
At D DSM serial numbers are 209 (power box) and 230 (dsm).
At C DSM serial numbers are 210 (cb), 250 (cu), and I couldn't see any of the higher ones (we may borrow Eli's binoculars tomorrow). The power box didn't have a serial number, or at least I couldn't see it from the ground.
At UW DSM serial numbers are 211 (power box) and 215 (dsm).
At UW we cleaned the NR01 at 12:35. We power cycled Ethan's lidar by opening the power box and disconnecting and reconnecting the lidar power supply cable (helpfully labeled). Ethan says he can connect to the lidar now, but it's giving messages about a mechanical error and may be out of commission for the rest of the project. Since that's the case, and since that lidar currently had a smaller USB stick installed, Ethan told us not to swap the USB for that lidar (that's lidar pi 3). We did swap in a new USB stick for the other lidar, pi 8.
Since we still had a fresh USB stick we went back to D and swapped it out with the one that had been in pi 6. We will have to swap the USB stick in the other pi at D tomorrow.
Headed back to Gothic around 2. Stopped in at Maroon to visit Danny, to drop off the lidar USB sticks for him to upload to Ethan's hard drive. The mote Danny and Eli have for the mobile tsnows is ID49, and it's v2.8. Took a little ski further up the road to Schofield Pass, but the snow is getting pretty sticky in the sun. We have neighbors in Lower Crystal tonight, a party of cross-country skiers.
Plan for tomorrow is:
- Swap out 3 more lidar USB sticks (will have to get at least one back from Danny in the morning). One at D and two at UE.
- Check power to CSAT3BH (couldn't do that today because the multimeter wasn't in the barrel, but we've gotten it back from Danny).
- Get some more DSM serial numbers, from UE which we haven't visited yet and possibly more from C.
- If we get all this done quickly, we've been considering leaving tomorrow, but we'll see how it goes.
I left Boulder around 9:45 this morning and got to the parking lot at 3:30. Roads were a little snowy but gradually improving, and the white pickup did fine apart from some slithering on Mitchell Ln. Meanwhile, Tony got an early start and enjoyed boarding the new snow at Crested Butte.
Left trailhead 4:00, to Crystal Cabin by 5:30. The snowmobile had just been by to groom the road to Gothic.
We checked in with Danny and Eli this evening. They're planning to dig snow pits at the site tomorrow and Saturday, so we'll all head out together tomorrow. Saw the glowing eyes of a fox on our way back from Maroon Cabin!
NOTE: A few times I had trouble with the traverse losing traction. The roads were pretty icy before sunrise and there was quite a bit of snow at Monarch pass. We may want to consider a winter tire or all season tire with deep tread. -Tony