“I thought maybe just making a safe walking surface for observers/inspectors...”
That was my thought.
Out West, the snow is so deep that scientists don’t have any tools to measure it
The snowpack is 212 inches deep at the Slide Mountain SNOTEL site. Water content at the site was 74.6 inches, meaning there’s more than six feet of water in the 17-foot snowpack. It’s a record for March 1 at the site.
The previous record for March 1 snow water equivalent at the site was a little more than five feet in 1997. The overall site record was more than seven feet of snow water equivalent in May 1995.