Vail & Summit County
AvalancheJason Konigsberg · Apr 1, 2019 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Mostly cloudy day with windy conditions at and near ridgetop. Temperatures stayed cold and winter-like all day.
Snowpack
Below treeline snow surfaces stayed frozen all day long on all aspects. Near and above treeline surfaces also stayed frozen on aspects that had seen a bit of sun on Sunday. Small wind slabs forming on isolated easterly terrain features. Northerly slopes out of the wind had about 6 inches of recent snow that was well bonded to old surfaces. Westerly slopes had a few inches of moderate-density snow on a thin crust on top of softer snow. ---Although we were watching out for both sluffing and small wind slabs in steep terrain, we didn't encounter either.---For a future storm the most concerning slopes would be slopes that are seeing short periods of warming and developing thin crusts but are still seeing plenty of cold temps for faceting around surface crusts. Due west and due east slopes above treeline seem to fit this category. Possibly other above treeline slopes as well but they were not observed.
Avalanche
We saw a couple natural Loose Dry avalanches today. These released from small snowfields in near-vertical terrain. Also observed was a Loose Wet avalanches on a south-facing slope from Sunday that ran about 800 vertical. The avalanche just entrained recent snow and ran a crust. Still small but could knock take a person off of their feet in very steep terrain. We also saw the remnants of a D3 avalanche from sometime in the first half of March. This avalanche ran full path taking out trees on a southerly slope.