Vail & Summit County
AvalancheKreston Rohrig · Nov 29, 2018 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Warm, teetering on too warm at lower elevations. High temps made the new snow sticky but up higher conditions cooled. Clouds were building around 2:30pm with light snow turning to S1 by 3:30. Winds were calm but picked up from the south when the snow arrived.
Snowpack
Boot pen was easily mid-thigh and took little effort to stomp to the ground. Not surprising, the new snow over the last 7 days has settled into a soft but supportable 4f slab. This rests above weaker layers of facets and and lower melt-freeze crust. Stability tests failed to the ground with moderate to hard scores, but did propagate with an ECT. With each new load the slabs will continue to settle and strengthen, but a big storm with rapid loading could produce failures to the ground in steep terrain at lower elevations. Continued moderate to large collapses were observed today, confirming the weak nature of the weak snow near the ground.
Avalanche
None observed