Vail & Summit County
SnowpackAndrew McWilliams · Nov 22, 2023 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Light winds from the northwest and few clouds with temperatures in the 30s.
Snowpack
The snowpack is thin in this traditionally windy and scoured location. Most southerly slopes are bare ground with some drifting near the ridgecrest in places. Westerlies were mostly scoured as well. Northerlies and easterlies had the most snow, but there were many ground obstacles like bushes and rocks visible. There were a few larger drifts, but these were generally discontinuous. Snow cover is mostly confined to terrain undulations that can catch snow. I dug a snowpit on a northeast aspect just below 12,000 feet and found a 30cm snowpack composed of faceted grains and decomposing fragments. There was no slab and an ECT had a non-propagating result on the sixth tap from the wrist. This tells me that if there was a slab, the basal facets would propagate the failure across the column. There were isolated areas with a denser slab below the newest snow on north through east aspects at this elevation, but they were not well-connected across terrain features. I noticed surface hoar development on easterly and northerly aspects with grains over 2mm in size in protected areas. If these persistent grains get buried before they get destroyed by the sun or the wind, they could be a weak layer moving forward.