Vail & Summit County
AvalanchePeter Brennen · Mar 5, 2017 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Partly cloudy, some light winds from the West. Temps in the high 40s down low (~9300 ft.) and somewhat, but not much, colder at the peak (11,400 ft.)
Snowpack
Entire tour was <TL. 9300 ft.: stiff, crusty melt/refreeze. Western slopes have been blown/melted quite a bit with lots of brush/dirt poking through. W/NW slopes show lots of evidence of windblown snow, but no crack propagation during the skin up. ~10,500ish: snow transitioned between melt/refreeze hard crust, to thin/breaking crust, to wet/loose as would be expected with the recent winds from the west. More northern facing slopes showed significantly less crusting, west facing slopes were icy/crusty/hard with the quality transitioning between the two aspects as would be expected based on sun and western wind exposure. 11,000+ NW ridge snow was soft with no real crusting in most places. Dug a quick pit at the summit facing roughly WSW: (11,400 ft.) about a 1cm melt-refreeze crust on top of 75 cm of mostly F and 4F snow. Some random melt/refreeze chunks throughout the observation wall in this area, but no uniform layering. Below that, P/1F for about 10 cm. 115cm total depth at the peak. In a northern aspect section, traversed a relatively steep slope (maybe 35 deg? Did not measure) and, qualitatively, the snow was pretty dry and loose, but wasn't sluffing off my tracks more than what the skis pushed down. Did not bring the right gear to isolate a column, but a shovel-depth column held to CTM20 around 20cm down, SC, non-planar. Probably doesn't mean much because the column wasn't isolated much more than 30cm down in the back.
Avalanche
None.