The Provo Brothers took a trip out to the PC Ridgeline in Utah and were kind enough to provide the above video from their findings. It’s sketchy, to say the least. For the non-avalanche lingo savvy out there, ECT = Extended Column Test. In short, it’s a way of measuring the strength of the snowpack as well as the energy stored within the snowpack. Essentially giving one an idea of how a snowpack will handle additional stress and the way that fractured will propagate. The first number of the test indicates at what point the column failed. 1-10 are taps from the wrist, 11-20 from the elbow, and 21-30 from the shoulder. So, an ECT of 13 indicates a failure at the third tap from the elbow. The second part, Q1 in this case, indicates the quality of the sheer- roughly how “well” it propagated. In this case, a Q1, it’s the highest level of propagation, or “worst” for skiing purposes. The take home message: be careful out there!