Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

Jason Konigsberg, Ron Simenhois · Dec 8, 2016 · Vail & Summit County

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Weather

Skies were scattered to broken in the morning changing to overcast by 1 PM. The wind was calm at our near treeline location but small plumes of wind-drifted snow could still be seen on the high ridgelines such as the Ten Mile Range.

Snowpack

The snowpack structure is poor and there are multiple layers of weak, faceted snow. Still, in many areas there is not enough of a slab. We only found a thick slab where the avalanche today was triggered. Moving a few feet away from the avalanche showed a very weak snowpack but no slab. See video and attached snowpit for more details.