Vail & Summit County
AvalancheKreston Rohrig · Feb 16, 2019 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Periods of intense snowfall on the drive up to Mayflower dissipated to lingering light snow by noon. Skies were mostly obscured expect for a brief "sucker hole" around 1pm when the clouds broke for an hour. SW winds switched to a stronger and much colder wind from the NW around 2pm when the second wave of clouds and snow came in.
Snowpack
Wind loading and new slab formation was observed on many aspects near and above treeline. With 5" of new snow on the ground from this morning, SW winds switching to NW in the afternoon continued to load leeward slopes. In the areas traveled, no signs of instability like cracking or collapses were observed. I probed and dug a quick pit on a north facing slope above treeline in a heavily wind-loaded feature and found snow depths ranging in the 2-3 meter range. Most notable was newly formed slabs from wind-driven snow were very well bonded to the old snow surfaces below and took some effort to pry loose. Below the new snow, knife hard slabs have formed in this area, likely due to high winds recently. There is a lot of variability in the snowpack throughout the 10-mile from continued strong winds.
Avalanche
None observed.