OK I am a wee bit of a techie and work in a tech company so I'll preface my comments with appropriate caveats and use my background as a geek as an excuse for my interest here!
First, you should talk to the Scottish Avalanche Information Service (SAIS). I hear they are developing an "avalanche awareness" app (I don't have further details but sounds interesting). It would be good to understand if and how snow depth measurements could relate to risk of avalanche. I know layering of snow has an impact on avalanche risk so if you could detect that, you may have some magic!
On the practicalities of running a drone over mountains, wind on some days could be your biggest challenge. What is the maximum wind speed a drone could operate in?
Also, how much would you rely on communications to communictae your warnings eg. 3G or 4G cellular, Or would you land the drone and download your information from that "offline" as it were. BAck to the 3G/4G, in the UK and more so in Scotland, we are sadly lacking in that area in much of the highlands although in my day job I am part of an initiative looking to solve the 100% geographical cellular coverage problem. And there will be some major improvements announced publicly in the not too distant future from one of the operators. Maybe you could build in your own 4G to your drone .. Lime Microsystems have an open source radio development kit that could maybe help you
You never know, maybe one day climbers will take a drone to shadow them to tell them in advance of potentially high risk avalanche potential areas on the mountain. OK I may be dreaming here but sounds like your idea, if feasible, could help achieve that.
(PS: ping me on
sspeirs@cisco.com I can tell you more about Lime Microsystems and their development kit which is being made available to a few universities in Scotland)
Stephen