Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

We dug on a southeast-facing near treeline slope and found a snow depth of 56 cm. The recent storm snow was about 35 cm thick and faceting at the surface. This storm snow was right-side up with soft fist hard snow progressing to four-finger hard snow with depth. This snow sits on a 4 cm thick melt-freeze crust. We did not find facets above this crust or get propagating results. The most faceted snow is beneath this crust but with a thick crust above, it would take a much larger load to affect this weak layer. The snowpack depth on east-facing slopes near treeline is 70 to 80 cm which is a bit shallower than suspected. The snowpack structure was as expected with the weakest snow at 30 cm from the ground, essentially the top of the basal facets. There was a thin layer of wind-packed one-finger hard snow capping the basal facets, which was from strong westerly winds prior to the big storm. We got results of ECTP 21 at 35 cm from the ground.