Vail & Summit County
AvalancheWill Gordon · Jan 13, 2025 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Cold air temps. Increasing sky cover and westerly winds. There was a little bit of light snow in the afternoon but no accumulation.
Snowpack
The weekend's snow has settled to about 15cm. Breaking trail on a near-treeline slope facing WSW, the snow was mostly supportable to ski travel with minor cracking at my ski tips. I found a weaker spot near some trees and caused a significant collapse and could see some small trees wiggling over 100' away. In this area (WSW, 11100', 20deg slope), the snowpack was about a meter deep. I dug a quick pit and got an ECTP12 about 50cm down on 2mm facets. Crossing over the ridge to an easterly, near treeline area I encountered substantial cracking with some opening several centimeters wide. As I skied and skinned around, pretty much every slope and convexity had signs of recent cracking and/or collapsing. I could not see, hear, or feel them happening; they hay have been there already or I may have been triggering them from beyond my view and around terrain features. In this area the snow was about 130cm deep.
Avalanche
I saw a significant avalanche on a relatively small slope at 11,100' facing East and in the trees. This may have been a natural or I may have remotely triggered it from a long way away. I checked out the crown. The weak layer was about 10cm thick of 1mm, fist hard facets. ECTP21, PST 25/100 end. Higher up I noticed another small avalanche on a NE-facing slope closer to the ridge. In the distance I could what looked like debris from an avalanche on Baldy (SW, ~12300). It was hard to get a sense of the size or character of that one.