Dear Authors,
Thank you for the revision of your manuscript, and for considering the reviewer’s comments. I find your revisions mostly acceptable, however, I think that you should still more clearly address some of the shortcomings of your study, as mentioned by the reviewers. You answered many concerns of the third reviewer (Yackel), but you did not clearly include your responses in the manuscript.
Most importantly, please address the issue of variable incident angles more clearly. Despite calibration and DEM correction there is the issue of physical backscatter vs incident angle variations even for level, homogeneous surfaces. This is most pronounced for surface scattering. Therefore the question really arises if your results would be applicable to data with different incident angles. One could suspect that incidence angle differences somewhat contributed to your results, and that the role of polarization may be less important? There are too many studies showing uncritical evaluation of SAR data application for various problems, often overselling the applicability of SAR. Most of these do not pay attention to incident angle variations.
In this regard, could you please also provide more explanations for the physical reasons believed to yield better results with HH than with VV in your study and others.
Also please be more clear in the manuscript about diurnal variations and the effect of different acquisition times. I think the reviewer’s concern is quite valid, that there will be strong diurnal variations in this season (as seen with the temperature data), and therefore backscatter will vary strongly and the applicability of your results at all times more difficult? Or do you think that the high snow wetness would buffer diurnal temperature and backscatter variations? In any case the arguments need to be better brought forward.
In this regard it would also be good if you could state what the time difference between UTC and your solar time is.
You make a statement about higher resolution of SAR at higher incident angles. This is true theoretically, however, the products you use have been regridded with constant pixel size, so that the resolution is the same everywhere?
Please consider these comments and provide responses.
Please also check for minor typos included in your revisions, and to shorten the abstract (first part).
Thank you and best regards
Christian Haas