Snow section

Make a section in the snow with your shovel. This represents locally an 'autopsy'of the physical parameters of the snow

Then the hardness, dampness, type of crystal, etc...of every layer identified can be estimated.

The manual hardness test (fist, 4 fingers, 1 finger, pencil, blade) gives a rough estimate of the hardness of each layer.

The temperature of the snow is not uniform through the whole thickness of the cover

These variations in temperature (measurable by the gradient) enable the metamorphosis of grains of dry snow within a layer

These physical parameters together with their development influence the stability of the whole of the snow cover.