Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

Jason Konigsberg, Ben Markhart · Mar 7, 2022 · Vail & Summit County

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Weather

Winds were calm this morning and all aspects look very white for a change. Westerly winds started to pick up after noon with some light snow transport. There is a lot of snow available for transport on westerly slopes especially from Vail Pass to the west where storm snow totals are around a foot.

Snowpack

All southerly (SW,S,SE) slopes at all elevations had thick, bombproof crusts under the 12 inches of storm snow. We tried repeatedly to trigger avalanches on southeast slopes but there just wasn't a cohesive, drifted slab once we got ten feet below the ridge. East-facing slopes were a different story and the recently drifted slab near ridgetop was easy to trigger with small cornice drops. These avalanches were failing on a thin crust. Besides the east-facing small avalanches, we found very few signs of instability. Three was no collapsing on steep slopes and no deep shooting cracks. We also didn't travel on some of the most suspect slopes such north and northeast, so it could be different there.