Vail & Summit County
SnowpackJason Konigsberg · Apr 29, 2021 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
No wind and no wind loading. Clear skies. About 4 to 5 inches of new snow from the most recent storm. Much less at lower elevations.
Snowpack
New snow stayed dry on northerly aspects above treeline before noon. A few mid-slope rolls felt like they had been wind drifted in the past few days but this not obvious from surface clues. No obvious signs of instability observed. We dug on a north-facing slope and found a similar structure to what I found recently in the Sawatch- Not much snow above the most recent dust layer with the layer of concern buried about 18 inches from the surface. This layer of faceted snow is sandwiched by two harder slabs. It would be hard to impact this layer and we did not perform any stability tests. Near and below treeline, the snow was moist on all aspects. The new snow had already baked down to just a few inches and any loose wet avalanches in this snow would be small. Bigger concern is if the surface does not refreeze on Saturday or Sunday night for larger gouging wet avalanches.