Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

Jason Konigsberg · Feb 13, 2017 · Vail & Summit County

Weather

Skies were overcast to broken for most of the day. At times, low clouds obscured the sky making for poor visibility. The light northeast wind was only noticeable at ridgetop and was not transporting much snow. Temperatures were mild, in the mid-thirties, though it felt much cooler with the breeze.

Snowpack

The snowpack in the area I traveled, which was at elevations 10,600ft to 12,300ft and most aspects, is showing very good stability. It is hard to find any layers that remain wet from the recent warm-up or any other layers of concern for that matter. The recent 2 inches of storm snow is bonded well to a very hard ice crust and slabs of wind-drifted snow are non-existent. Anything below this ice formation would be very hard to affect. I found this layer on most aspects. An east aspect that I skied would have been fairly slick and treacherous if not for the good bond of the new snow to the crust below. The snowpack below this crust is 1F to P hard, with no weaknesses, for at least another meter below the surface. I did not dig to the ground...One exception to the the overall good snowpack is a snowpit I dug on a north-facing slope at about 12k ft. The snow depth was only 95cms and an extended-column test propagated on 16 taps at 40 cms down on 1mm facets. The slab above this layer is 1F to P hard and it also would be hard to affect this weak layer. In this snowpit there was also 4-finger hardness 2mm DH at the ground. These thin and weak snowpack areas are very isolated. As the winter progresses we will have to keep an eye on exposed northerly slopes for this type of snowpack as recent wind events are keeping these slopes shallow.