Hand Drawn (and Hiked) by McCall

Morning! I woke up in the mood to write, so let’s write.

Avalanche Chronicles

This week, we’re gonna dive a little further into how avalanches work. We’ve covered climates, anchors, and slab types, so what else is there to chat about? Well, a ton. But let’s start with settlement, sintering, and creep.

Snow is constantly moving on the micro and macro level. When a snowflake falls from the sky, it doesn’t stay in that shape for long. The second it connects with the snow surface, a rapid process of change starts. Similar to people, as snowflakes age they lose their definition and become a little rounder, and form bonds with their neighbors (hope you liked that analogy as much as I did). For us, it’s called growing up; for snow, it’s called sintering.

In short, sintering is forming bonds with neighboring crystals to create the fabric of the snowpack. As this process goes on and on, the snow becomes denser and stronger — a bigger process known as settlement.

At the same time, a snowpack is moving downhill in a process called creep. At any point in time, snow is being pulled downhill by gravity.

In the above photo, the red arrows indicate creep — you can see here how the layers towards the bottom of the snowpack are slowed by tension, while the snow at the top easily slides. The black arrows indicate glide — when an entire snowpack shifts at once (vs. with creep, it happens layers at a time).

We’ll be going deeper into actual avalanche terrain next time, so buckle up folks.

Artiste Break

Your brain break this week is my most recent drawing of Art Bar in the West Village. This one is a wedding gift for a close friend — it’s where she and her soon-to-be husband had their first date (and I was lucky enough to be the one who walked her to that date!). This place always makes me smile.

Mini Musings

Last week, I listened to an episode of the Move With Heart podcast all about Human Design. At it’s core, it’s the idea that we’re all put on this earth with a purpose and the journey of our life is finding our way back to that purpose.

I’m not certain how I feel about it yet, but I picked up a copy of the Human Design book, and as I work my way through I thought it was worth noodling on here.

One concept I’m always conscious of when reading about stuff like this is something called the Forer Effect. By definition, the Forer Effect is a psychological phenomenon by which individuals give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically to them, yet which are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a range of people.

An example? My first day of classes of freshman year of college I was in a behavioral psychology class and my professor did a little exercise with us. He told us he was a handwriting analysis expert and had us all write a sentence with every letter of the alphabet (the quick brown fox… you know the rest). Part of the class was a large, 100+ person lecture and then a lab with about 10 other students another day of the week. Later that same week in our lab, our TA told us that our professor had analyzed our handwriting and had a unique personality description for all of us. The TA quietly handed out our slips of paper and cautioned us to keep them to ourselves as they were likely extremely personal. Mind you, I switched labs last minute, so my analysis wasn’t with that TA and I was able to watch all of this unfold from the sidelines.

Everyone opened their personalized analysis and it felt like chaos ensued. Two people claimed they had goosebumps, one guy said he had never heard a more accurate depiction of himself ever, and one student demanded to know how our professor could possibly know all of this based on handwriting — to which, the TA replied to take a look at your neighbor’s analysis.

We all had the exact same description on our “analysis”. It was just a demonstration of the Forer Effect.

In short? Take your horoscopes and human designs with a grain of salt. Psychology will thank you.

What I’m Noodling On

💸 My girl Katie just released the 2024 edition of her wealth planner and it’s everything and more. Highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend snagging one while you can!

🎿 At this point, it’s almost more satisfying to watch Cody Townsend call it and not ski a line than it is to watch him ski one. Check out this recent episode of The Fifty for a masterclass in decision making in the backcountry

💿 Lately I’ve been taking a dive down The Head And The Heart’s discography. Enter at your own risk; feels are imminent

Be back soooooon!

- McCall 🌻

Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here so you don’t miss the next one!