Mr. Forthsye, the Forestry and Wildlife teacher planned a field trip to Lookout Pass, a ski resort in Montana so students could learn more about the different layers in snow, avalanches and so they can dig holes.

Part of this field trip was to learn about avalanche safety. While in the Forestry and Wildlife class students had to learn the cause of avalanches and avalanche safety. 

This field trip was about an hour and a half drive to get to Lookout. If students lacked the proper attire, the school would provide some. 

The main purpose of this field trip was to find how many layers there are in the snow, how long each layer was in the snow, the temperature, the snow density, and the final thing that the students had to do was find out how hard the snow was.

The first thing that we did on this trip was to dig a massive hole in the snow, the snow was pretty high and took a while to shovel. We had a full kit of all the things we needed for all the steps.

We then figured out the layers and my group’s snow pit had 13 snow layers, to figure out the layers you just feel the snow and find the differences within the layers. After we figured out the layers we used popsicle sticks to show where each one was. 

After the layers, we had to figure out the temperature of each layer of snow which averaged around -3 degrees celsius. Then we had to find the snow density which was pretty easy to do, so we scooped up some snow that we weighed. Then the final step was to find the hardness and all you had to do was hit the snow and see how far your hand would go. 

All this ties into avalanche safety because the different layers of snow can cause an avalanche if the bottom layers were softer than the top ones, which is what happened with my group’s snow pit.

This field trip wasn’t too eventful. The field trip was mainly the drive to actually get to Lookout and all the steps for our snow pit only took about 45 minutes to complete, but I’d say it was worth going cause I got to miss a day of class and go up into the mountains.