Vail & Summit County
AvalancheAndrew McWilliams · Mar 6, 2024 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Broken skies and temperatures near freezing with light and variable winds.
Snowpack
I observed a snowpack that was supportable to ski travel in some places and not in others. Where the most recently formed drifted slab was thicker, it was supportable to ski travel. Closer to exposed bushes or in thinner areas, you broke into facets near the ground. The uppermost layer was composed of wind-packed rounded grains with a dust layer at the bottom. Below this was a melt-freeze crusts above a soft faceted layer. Below those facets was another melt-freeze crust that was the bed surface of the avalanche. Where I dug at the crown, this crust was decomposing and only one-finger hard on the Hand Hardness Scale and less than a centimeter thick. In other places, especially where the slope was steeper, this crust was knife hard and twice as thick. Below the bed surface were large facets resting on the depth hoar layer. It's likely that the crust the avalanche broke on was formed in early February, with the upper crust from later in February and the most recent snow and dust layer from the first few days of March. An Extended Column Test at the crown had propagating results after 11 taps on the lower crust layer.
Avalanche
Avalanche was previously coded here: https://avalanche.state.co.us/observations/field-report/75ac1286-e43e-4963-919d-729307c52ce1