Vail & Summit County
AvalancheIan Fowler Andrew McWilliams · Apr 1, 2023 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
The day quickly warmed up. Winds were continuing to transport snow onto easterly slopes.
Snowpack
Ascending below treeline there was very little wind affect in the snow. Once we crested the ridge out of the treeline there was a very obvious line of scouring and wind deposition. Dropping small cornices on northerly slopes had little affect. When we skied down into the bowl south of the peak we remote triggered an avalanche. This ran on the highest melt freeze crust in the snowpack (about 20cm down) that had a 5cm layer of facets above it. Digging further down on this aspect there were multiple crusts with facets around them and a prominent layer of depth hoar at the ground. Extended Column Tests failed on a layer of facets beneath the highest crust. When leaving my southerly test site I felt a large collapse. On a northerly aspect the surface slab development was confined to just below ridge crests and lower down it was soft powder. The snowpack had a crust down about 20cm which could be one to watch if facets grow around it. We did not see propagating results in Extended Column Tests.
Avalanche
It appeared we remote triggered an avalanche from about 100m away as we descended to the south. This then simpathetically triggered an additional avalanche. There is a chance they could have been there ahead of time but they looked very fresh.