Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

Ben Williams · Jan 1, 2021 · Vail & Summit County

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Weather

Calm, -8 degrees celsius (17.6 degrees F). Mostly sunny on NW/W/SW/S between 10,600ft and 11,700ft. Sun felt as if it was intense enough to start affecting the snow quality on S/SW aspects however it didn't appear to be as the snow was still soft around noon.

Snowpack

During the tour between 10,600 and 11,700 vertical we felt and heard numerous whumps/collapsing as we ascended NW/W/SW/S. The type of terrain we experienced this was in large openings and sparse trees. We counted four instances through our tour so this was widespread. As we were not around steep terrain we did not observe any slides. We decided to dig a pit on a NW slope to see where the largest week layers were (see snow pit chart). In summary we found a CT resulted in CT20 at 35cm and a ECT resulted in ECTP27 (SP). Surface hoar was also observed on these aspects.