Front Range
SnowpackAndrew McWilliams · Dec 15, 2025 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Light winds from the southwest with mostly sunny skies and above-freezing temperatures.
Snowpack
I targeted above treeline, southeast-facing slopes. I dug a few pits and did tests in an area with a thin slab (20cm thick) and an area with a thicker slab (60cm thick). In both pits, I got the same result in an Extended Column Test (ECT) with a propagating result after a single tap from the elbow at the interface with the basal facet layer. In both pits, the weak snow on the ground was facets, not depth hoar, and the slab was composed of rounded grains, with a hardness of one-finger to pencil hard on the hand hardness scale. I purposely dug pits where I would find a slab and weak layer combination, but as I said above, these areas are becoming less connected and more stubborn to trigger. I descended a northeast-facing slope and dug a quick pit as well. The setup was similar - a dense slab resting on weak snow near the ground - and the deepest drift I found was about 150cm thick. But again, the snow depth was highly variable across the terrain.