Vail & Summit County

Avalanche

Sam Chipkin · Jan 2, 2022 · Vail & Summit County

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Weather

Beautiful blue, calm day

Snowpack

We dug a pit at 11,400' in a wind sheltered area near treeline. We discovered a layer of fist hard new snow sitting on top of a 4F-1F slab which made up 140-30cm of the snowpack. At 30CM we discovered a robust melt freeze crust about 12cm thick. Lastly from 18cm-0cm was composed of depth hoar. We did an ECT and got no results on 30 taps, but got a full propagating failure on the 33rd tap. The block slid completely off on a smooth planar bed surface of near surface facets at 30cm on the melt freeze crust

Avalanche

We saw a small avalanche, maybe an R1-D1.5 on a NE facing over the edge of the ridgeline we were traveling on