Vail & Summit County
SnowpackJason Konigsberg · May 8, 2025 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
More sun in the morning. More clouds around noon. Winds were cool and breezy from a northerly direction.
Snowpack
Clouds and wind kept the upper snowpack cool. Every time things started to really heat up, the clouds rolled back in. I traveled mostly on southwest and west-facing slopes (where the new snow is), and didn't find any signs of unstable snow, wet or dry. I traveled through steeper, rocky areas and pushed on the new snow with no results. Descending a southerly-facing slope at 13k at around noon, the upper snowpack was still dry and cool. The snow surface faceted on Thursday night, making it feel as if the top few inches of snow dried out. It felt like Alaskan ski conditions with a dry few inches of faceted snow near the surface, spongy conditions underneath, and ski pen only a few inches deep. On westerly-facing slopes, where I found 20 to 40 cm of storm snow, the new snow was homogenous and one-finger hard. I did not find any obvious layers of differing density within the storm snow.