Vail & Summit County
AvalancheScott Toepfer · Jan 3, 2022 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Just a few clouds. Winds increased all day long, though rather mild temps. Winds along the peaks were quite strong. Impressively strong. Big banners. Some great snownadoe captured on video but I do not have the skill set to upload it.
Snowpack
Did not go near anything over 25 degrees, so did not bother to poke around
Avalanche
4 natural slabs on north aspect of the east ridge of Pacific Peak. Too far away for fotos. Two of these were in a bowl/face feature loaded from southerly winds. One of these slabs ran on low angle terrain, right about 30 degrees (had checked slope angle in the past on ski tours). Had discussions about skiing this terrain in the past and always came back to the low slope angle. So an eye opener. Start zones around 12,000 feet. Crowns around 1-2’ deep. The two out in the open were around 100-150 feet wide and ran ~100-150 vertical. Thinking HSNR2D1’s on old snow surface. Low angle on the one was noteworthy, quite interesting. The other 2 ran in some tree slots. Crowns on these 2 looked deep, 3+ feet. Estimate 50’ wide, but could not see how far they ran, but pretty much wall to wall in their respective terrain features. Similar to the human triggered slide reported around Peak 9 at Breck SA yesterday. High consequence terrain. Give them HSNR2D1.5-D2’s. Hard to say not knowing how far they ran. Bad ones to get caught in knowing that terrain.