Those old-timers fought blizzards and avalanches from November through March in the bleak, towering peaks of the Northwest to the weathered crags of the Appalachians, measuring thousands of predesignated snow courses the last week of each winter month. Upon those readings had been based the crude, wide-margin streamflow forecasts for the coming year.
Now, a score of refined instruments did the same job automatically at hundreds of thousands of almost-inaccessible locations throughout the northern hemisphere. Or at least, almost automatically. Twenty feet above the two DivAg hydrologists and less than a hundred yards east, on the very crest of an unnamed peak in the wilderness of Idaho's Sawtooth Mountains, radiation snow gauge P11902-87 had quit sending data three days ago.
The snow-profile flight over the area showed a gap in the graphed line that flowed over the topographical map of the Sawtooths as the survey plane flew its daily scan. The hydrotech monitoring the graph reported the lapse to regional headquarters at Spokane and minutes later, a communications operator punched up the alternate transmitter for P11902-87. Nothing happened although the board showed the gauge's cobalt-60 beta and gamma still hot. Something had gone wrong with the tiny transducer transmitter. A man, or to be more precise, two men, had to replace the faulty device.
The two men and the replacement gauge, trudged out again into the face of the rising storm.
Troy and Alec pushed diagonally up the snow slope, pausing every few minutes to take new directional readings. The needles were now at right angles to them and reading well into the "hot" red division of the intensity meter. They still were ten feet below the crest and a cornice of snow hung out in a slight roof ahead of them. Both men had closed the face hatches of their insulated helmets and tiny circulators automatically went to work drawing off moisture and condensation from the treated plastic.
"Wonder if that chunk is going to stay put while we go past," Alec called, eyeing the heavy overhang. Troy paused and the two carefully looked over the snow roof and the slope that fell away sharply to their right.
"Looks like it avalanched once before," Troy commented. "Shall we operate, Dr. Patterson?"
"Better extravagant with the taxpayers' money than sorry for ourselves," Alec replied, pulling the avalanche gun from his holster. It looked like an early-day Very pistol, with its big, straight-bore muzzle. "Let's get back a couple of feet."
They kick-turned and skied back from the sides of the cornice. Alec raised the gun and aimed at the center of the deepest segment over the overhang. The gun discharged with a muffled "pop" and the concentrated ball of plastic explosive arced through the air, visible to the naked eye. It vanished into the snow roof and the men waited. Ten seconds later there was a geyser of flame and the smoke and snow as the charge detonated deep under the overhang. The wind whipped the cloud away and the roof still held, despite the gaping hole.
"What do you think?" Troy asked.