Vail & Summit County
AvalancheJason Konigsberg · Jan 16, 2017 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Early morning low clouds dissipated making for good visibility with scattered to broken skies. A cloud layer persisted at around 13k feet obscuring the highest peaks. Winds were calm and there was no evidence of any wind loading at any elevation.
Snowpack
In this area the below treeline snowpack is still generally faceted and shallow. A general lack of a slab results in good stability but the Persistent Slab problem will have to be monitored for future storms. I think with the abundant snowfall of the last few weeks a lot of low-elevation areas that usually hold no snow and usually aren't given much thought, now hold a thin and shallow snowpack. With a another large storm we should pay attention to lower elevations than normal. The snowpack depth below 10k feet is 60 to 100 cms....I dug two snowpits on southeast-facing slopes around 11k feet in elevation (near treeline). The first snowpit produced a ECTP27 result on weak facets, 55cms from the surface and below a thin and fragile melt-freeze crust. Although there was faceted snow in the lower snowpack this layer is the only layer of concern. The fracture was very clean and planar. Digging on another southeast aspect about one mile away showed a very stable snowpack with no results in tests and no weak layers of concern...In this area I did not see any layers of surface hoar preserved by the few inches of snow from the last couple of days.
Avalanche
Small Loose Wet avalanches out of steep rocky terrain on south-facing slopes around 9000 feet. These likely occurred on Sunday. Some of these avalanche gouged down in to weaker snow but still relatively shallow.