Vail & Summit County

Avalanche

Kevin Donaldson · Mar 3, 2021 · Vail & Summit County

View on map

Weather

Clear with calm winds until 3pm when the winds picked up to Light out of the WSW. We recorded a temp of 39F at 2pm ATL and 39F at 3pm BTL. Very intense solar throughout the day.

Snowpack

We observed a Stubborn Persistent Slab that was specific to East and South East facing slopes NTL and ATL. We dug a pit at 12,000' (ATL) and found an HS of 103cm. The top 85cm consisted of alternating 1F and 4F hard layers. The bottom 15cm was F hard. See attached snowpilot for details. This pit was dug in an interesting location by accident. A giant rock/boulder took up about 2/3 of the pit and was approx. 30cm tall. We decided to continue with this location due to the fact this would be an area where triggering an avalanche would be most likely. We did observe about 2-3cm of large facets around the rock that were protruding into a layer that was 1F hard. We performed our taps on the side of the ECT that was most shallow. ECTN24 50cm (from the bottom). We also dug a pit 11,200' (BTL) and found a very different snowpack. HS was 76cm. The top 10cm was starting to melt, however there was no free moving water within this layer. The remaining 66cm of the snowpack consisted of F hard faceted crystals with a P hard layer of Depth Hoar within the bottom 17cm. CT26BKN @56cm (from the bottom).

Avalanche

There were a few small loose wet avalanches on the West facing cliffs above the Eisenhower Tunnel. They were no longer than 20-30ft and did not contain much snow.