Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

Like most of the Vail-summit zone, the snowpack is still mostly shallow and weak here. The current storm is building thin wind slabs up to 6" thick near and above treeline. There is a density inversion in the new snow and it is bonding poorly to the old snow surface. The lower snowpack is mostly composed of depth hoar and facets with some isolated hard slabs interspersed within it. It was easy to fell the edges of these persistent slabs with ski pole probing and sometimes with our skis.