Vail & Summit County
AvalancheJason Konigsberg · Jan 8, 2018 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
About 6 inches of snow from Saturday night's storm. Evidence of wind-drifting onto easterly slopes. Today (Monday) it was very warm, and there was no snow transport as winds were light.
Snowpack
I felt more collapsing today than I have since right after the XMas storm. Collapses were not large, slopewide collapses but they weren't very small either. The largest collapses were felt on southeast slopes where there is a consistent faceted layer buried under a shallow melt-freeze crust. I dug on north and northeast slopes and found very weak depth hoar that would propagate fractures in ECTs (medium to hard results). No surprise there. The mid-pack faceted layer (under the XMas storm) showed signs of strength and in this particular area, the depth hoar was the weakest layer in the snowpack. Near treeline snow depth is about 1 meter. The snow coverage is consistent around the near treeline elevation band and as mentioned previously, this elevation band will be most worrisome.
Avalanche
I walked by a few avalanches that were previously reported in the Uneva area. These avalanches were all small and most likely occurred during heavy snowfall on Saturday night. Avalanches may have been Storm Slab avalanches due to intense precip rates. Wind-drifting likely played a factor. At this point it is unlikely to trigger any of these small avalanches without them stepping into older snow.