Vail & Summit County
AvalancheKreston Rohrig · Apr 2, 2020 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
The weather got increasingly worse as the approaching storm neared. By 12:30pm the skies had darkened and ridge top wind were nasty. A strong SW wind accompanied by increasing snowfall drove us out of the alpine.
Snowpack
I dug in two locations, one on northwest and one and southeast right at the margin of near and above treeline. Both sites had snow depths ranging from 180-300+cm (deeper in wind the drifted areas, of course). The snowpack in both locations reflects the recent weather with three distinct melt/freeze crusts sandwiched in between softer layers, all in the upper 1 foot of snow. This is primarly due to periods of warm weather saddled between recent small storms. Below this mixed bag of layers is a stout 100cm slab that caps weaker early season snow near the ground. Stability tests showed zero propagation on any of these layers.
Avalanche
None observed