Vail & Summit County
AvalancheAndrew McWilliams · Feb 1, 2024 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Temperatures near or just above freezing, scattered clouds, and light winds from the southwest at ridgetop.
Snowpack
I observed a snowpack that ranged from about 80cm deep on low-elevation southerly slopes to about 150cm deep on upper-elevation northerly and easterly slopes. In all of my snowpits, there was a dense midpack slab that was one-finger to pencil hard on the hand hardness scale. This slab ranged from 30cm thick to about 1m thick. The weak layer that was buried on January 4 was present but was unreactive in my snowpits. Where the snowpack was thinnest, I got a propagating result after taps from the shoulder in an Extended Column Test at the basal facet interface. Of note was widespread surface hoar formation on all aspects at all elevations. Even though the surface snow was composed of melt-forms on a below treeline southerly slope, there were still intact hoar grains as well, although these were likely destroyed by day's end. Surface hoar was intact near the summit of Buffalo Mountain at about 12,600 feet in elevation. The grains were about 4mm in size on average, but there were places were there smaller and larger grains. Below this weak surface were near-surface facets or faceting decomposing forms. On southerly-facing slopes, a surface crust with facets just below it will likely develop before the next storm arrives. It is these weak surface conditions that are my primary concern in this area - crust/facet combination on southerly slopes and surface hoar and facets on northerly slopes.
Avalanche
Of the two avalanches on Red Peak, one was previously coded in this observation: https://avalanche.state.co.us/observations/field-report/b159bc50-5608-4a95-85d7-40c3ded6a8f0