Vail & Summit County
AvalancheKreston Rohrig · Dec 29, 2014 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Overcast with light winds and light snow. NE facing slope around 11,600. Top of East Vail Chutes
Snowpack
Pit location was skier's left of Abrams in the upper start zone. We dug two pits in this area 10m apart to see if an earlier reported avalanche had wiped out the early season snow from Sept and Oct. We discovered that the entire seasons snowpack was intact in this area with HS ranging from 170cm - 190cm with well developed depth hoar formed from the early season snowfall. The second layer of interest was the rain crust that developed around Thanksgiving and the weak interface that has developed above this layer. Results from stability tests were very consistent on this interface producing very clean sudden planer results (100cm down). The rest of the snowpack seems to be gaining strength and is fairly uniform, which may be contributing to the lack of avalanche activity in this area where skier traffic remains high.
Avalanche
None