Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

Drew Gibson · Apr 18, 2012 · Vail & Summit County

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Weather

Partly cloudy throughout the day, and hot near tree line. Above treeline we had swirly winds in the basin, but higher up winds were moderate out of the WNW. The wind kept things cool up high. A light dusting of snow 4/19 AM with moderate winds.

Snowpack

8"-12" of storm snow from last week was bonding well to the old surface. Dug into some of the old snow and found a moderate sheer plane 20cm below the 1 finger hardness old surface. Looked like rounding facets. Under that was 1 finger to pencil hardness. Couldn't get that layer to fail with compression, CTN, ECTX. At ridge crest the wind had affected the surface forming a zipper wind skin but no wind slabs that we could find. Overall the skiing was great on well bonded snow.