Vail & Summit County

Avalanche

Jeremy Primmer · Apr 14, 2022 · Vail & Summit County

Weather

Blustery above the treeline with snow loading down into the treeline with westerly winds. Overcast trending to broken skies during the day.

Snowpack

I left the boundary of Beaver Creek and headed to the top of Stone Creek. Winds were loading easterlies into the treeline. There was 8-18” of fresh snow on wind-loaded slopes, and westerlies had been scoured down to the dust layer from the last wind event. I only noticed cracking underfoot, and the top 2-3” of snow was stiffer four-finger to one-finger hard with fist hard snow underneath. On more exposed slopes and as I got closer to the treeline, the wind slabs became stiffer. Stepping on small test slopes and cutting one small cornice, I could not get any of the wind slabs to fail. Digging into a northeast slope near the treeline, I found the mid-winter dry spell facets over a meter down and rounding. They were four-finger hard, and it was about a 30cm thick layer, but the upper snowpack in this location had several robust crusts.

Avalanche

Two small wind slabs that ran above Olsen Lake on SE facing slopes at the upper end of treeline