Vail & Summit County
SnowpackAlan Smith · Apr 16, 2011 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Temperatures were cold enough that the snow remained bulletproof even into the afternoon, and skies were cloudy. Winds were moderate, though from judging the snowpack it looked like they had been stronger before we arrived. Visibility was OK for a while, but began deteriorating around 1:00 when a system began to move in.
Snowpack
The snowpack was a little more sketchy than we had anticipated. Our original plan was to skin up the southeastern face of Mt. Democrat, roughly following the summer hiking trail, and then to ski the south face through the Lake Emma Chutes. However, we found lots of new, hard wind slabs once we skinned up the southeastern face above Kite Lake. The snow was highly variable, ranging back and forth between fresh wind slap and bulletproof snow with no wind slabs. It was enough to make us concerned, though, and the four of us decided to turn around at 13,200 feet due not only to worsening weather, but also to the snowpack, as the consequences of a slide in the Lake Emma Chutes would be disastrous. We proceeded carefully on our descent down the southeastern face of Democrat. There was no cracking or whoomphing and the snow didn't seem alarmingly touchy, but the wind slabs were definitely there. Also, on the ski out down the Kite Lake Road, we saw evidence of a recent slide down one of the eastern chutes of Mt. Buckskin (picture shown on next page).