Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

Jason Konigsberg · Jan 6, 2018 · Vail & Summit County

View on map

Weather

Windy and warm with moist snow on sunny slopes BTL. Short period of snow showers (S-1) at 2 PM.

Snowpack

Snowpit dug on a somewhat sheltered northeast NTL slope (see attached snowpit). Weak snow at the surface will not support much of a load. The weakest buried layer in the snowpack is the faceted layer that formed in mid-December. This layer is weaker than the depth hoar it sits on top of.---SLightly higher than the above-mentioned slope the terrain turns more alpine and there are many patches of bare ground. In terrain features that catch wind-drifted snow, I found a wind-packed snowpack up to 2 meters deep. There were no obvious weak layers from the surface to 1m down.