An Evening With Google Earth

Magalloway's hot sister. Look at those glades.  Hubba hubba.

The dry weather has us backcountry-repressed here at NEBC.  So we've been trying to scratch our itch by playing around with Google Earth to plan some future trips.  Come see what we've found.

-Trip Report- North Twin: I Don't Want To Be Right (March 2011)

This is not a slide.  That's okay though. 

Sometimes things have to go wrong for them to go right.  I set out to ski the North Twin Slide.  Instead I discovered a hidden gem, and set the foundation for a successful second attempt.

How Steep Is It?

The Flume a/k/a Certain Death

Have you ever skied Upper Goat on Stowe?  How about Devil’s Fiddle at Killington?  Middle Hardscrabble at Cannon?

How do they compare to the Headwall at Tuckerman’s, or the Flume, or that unnamed slide that keeps catching your attention on your trip through Crawford Notch?

 As I’ve been pondering different glades, slides and balds for skiing this winter, the question inevitably  arises: How steep is it?

Google Earth might just have a tool to help us all find the answer.

NOAA meets Google Earth and the Results are Nerdtastic!

I can see my freezer buildup from here.

NOAA and Google Earth have an icy love child, and that child's name is The National Snow Analyses 3D Interface. 

With daily updates, it provides 3D information on snowpack across the country for obsessive nerds like myself.

This is similar to the color coded maps I've linked to the main page, however information is provided for all of the Continental US and Canada.  Thus you can discover depressing tidbits like northern Georgia currently has more snow cover than Massachusetts.  Don't believe me?  Well go ahead and download today's .kmz file and open it up in Google Earth.

Note that it takes a few seconds for the data to fully download and even longer if you're using your Commodore 64. 

Thanks to jibmaster on the Telemark Talk forum for introducing me to this sexy new snow analysis tool.

Now go find some snow cover and get out there for some turns this weekend.