Matt and Gary visited the site in the morning, leaving Gothic around 9 and arriving at the site about 10. Matt swapped the USB sticks for the LIDAR Pis at tower d, Gary swapped them at ue. Matt brushed snow off the NR01 at uw. Matt also inspected the TRH at 1m on tower c and saw that the inlet was clear of the snow, so we didn't think anything needed to be done about that. Matt took a picture which he can post at some point.
The barrel is buried under several inches of snow, I had to probe around to find it, but we did not dig it out. No visible sign of slack in the guy lines. Did not browse or log into any DSMs, since everything had been operational when Matt checked the data from the hut before leaving.
We arrived back at Gothic around noon. Due to the strong winds forecast for the next day, we decided to ski back to the car that afternoon. We left Gothic around 2:15 and started driving home around 4:30.
Gary and I left Boulder around 8:30 this morning and arrived in Crested Butte around 2:00 this afternoon. The roads were all clear and the drive went well, save for a bit of snow as we approached CB. We hit the trail a little after 3:00 and made it to RMBL around 5:30. The path was pretty difficult for the two of us and it was snowing most of the way. Some sections had decent tracks, but many areas were filled in with either blowing snow or the new 1-2 inches that fell today.
In looking at the data this evening, things seem to be working well. I saw the odd T and RH readings at 1m.c and relatively lower values of Rsw.in at uw that Steve noted in an email to us. We will check both of these things out tomorrow morning and sweep off snow from the NR01, if needed.
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??
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.
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.
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
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
As mentioned before, we will now proceed to change out the LIDAR USB sticks every ops shift. The procedure for doing so is as follows:
- Verify number on the USB stick to the specific LIDAR Raspberry Pi (1+2:UE, 3+4:UW, and 5+6:D) - 2/17 Ethan told me it doesn't really matter which USB stick gets put in which lidar, as long as all the USB sticks are the same size.
- Remove and replace USB sticks on the minutes ending in 2,3,7, and 8 while trying to avoid 1,4,6,9 because the card reads every minute ending in 0 and 5
- Use a reliable clock with good gps time when doing so
- At D, the lidar pis are not in the DSM box–they're in the beige box hung on the boom near the DSM. There's a screwdriver taped inside the door of the power box you can use to open it.
- Probably a good idea to check with Ethan before a visit, in case he has specific directions about specific lidars.
The PIs and the majority of the SOS crew left Gothic in heavy snowfall conditions this morning. Antonio and I took some time to recoup and attend the ISF, EOL, and ISFS meetings. Danny wiped snow off the UW NR01 around 12:35 and dug a pit. Tomorrow Antonio and I will head out tomorrow morning for the drive home. Overall the PIs were very happy with the success of the IOP. Good job team!
Yesterday the SOS team went out to dig a snow pit up valley of Gothic near the Avery picnic ASFS deployment for SPLASH. The snow conditions were quite different from our pits down at Kettle Ponds. The snow layers were more gradual with less wind slab. Antonio and I also helped Danny troubleshoot his linear actuator thermistor. We checked for continuity across his wire connections and for any broken grounds. We found that the driver output voltage was less than the required 12V at about 9.38V. After looking at the driver and actuator diagrams, we suggested replacing the driver board ($15) to see if the output voltage increases to its required 12V.
Part of the SOS team (Ethan, Jessica, Julie, and Elise) went out to Kettle Ponds yesterday to switch out the SD cards for Ethan's LIDARs at D and UW. I proposed to Ethan that if we wanted to keep the LIDAR collection rate high, that the EOL team switches out the SD cards as apart of their ops duties.
- Yesterday afternoon, the ue GPS started looking good again. Maybe it didn't like one of Ethan's SD cards!
- Vtherm from the Apogees has had occasional large spikes. I'm assuming this is our same popsicle stick firmware issue (for which we now have a fix). We can remove these spikes in our software with "maxValue". I'll try to get this implemented.
After an epic ski down the sluice this morning we went out to Kettle Ponds to dig a snow pit, change out the Lidar SD cards on UE (1&2) and D (5), and wipe off the radiometer for Splash. We changed out the UE cards at 14:06 and 14:08, and the D cards at 14:29. We also measured a density of 9.8% at the surface, thats Champagne Powder, baby! Time for Taco Night.
After training yesterday, Antonio took the snow pit measurements today. It was snowing lightly when we went to the site this morning, but the snow started falling much more heavily on the ski back,. This afternoon has had lots of snowfall and wind (good timing to get back to the cabins by noon).
Today Antonio and I went with the entire SOS team to learn about snow. They dug a pit and taught Antonio all about the density, layers, and deposition of surface hoar. We were also interview by the Aspen Global Change Institute while out in the field. Antonio and I also did some backcountry skiing up in Aspen Alley. That was pretty cool.
