Vail & Summit County
SnowpackDrew Gibson · May 7, 2010 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
At the TH 0730 -12C ~10,900. Partly cloudy and it didn't look like it was going to warm up. Rather than take the road we center punched the gulch floor towards Pacific Cr. we discovered a temp inversion ~11,500ft ~5C. Cold temps kept the willows cold and supportive as we climbed up Pacific Cr. ~12,500
Snowpack
We traversed under the W face of Pacific finding 2-3cm new snow on top of P hard. I figure that's a sun/wind combo, our edges barely bit. The wind was L gusting to M a few times, from the S, the shoulder of Pacific was shaping the wind movement it seemed. We crossed a few wind loaded gullies etc, finding no CR or CO but anywhere from 10-50cm. These were isolated, the W face couloirs on Pacific looked pretty blown out, down to the dust layer in a few spots. 12,400ft we spotted a large recent (last 24hr) natural avi on Half Dome (pt 12,561ft N of Mayflower Hill) a ENE aspect ~12,500ft. From what we could see it looked more like a SS than wet. SS-N-D2.5-R3-0. She ran almost all the way to the basin floor, and pulled some small trees down at the bottom. We also witnessed several small wet sloughs coming off some low, out of the wind, N facing rock bands. We skied down into Humbug Gulch and experienced everything from hollow hard slabs, powder, corn, heavy corn and slush. The window of perfect snow was 15-20min in areas protected from the wind. We traversed through the S trees and found them to be fairly supportive ~12:30. Once out of the wind it was hot, breaking trail with just ~5cm new was slow and sticky. The layering we saw up high looks more like winter than spring. Hard wind slabs and a exposed sun crust or two over softer less supportive snow. The wind is being deceptive and keeping certain areas cool. We didn't dig any formal data or test plus pits. Cheers.=