Vail & Summit County
AvalancheAndrew McWilliams Austin DiVesta · Dec 20, 2024 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Moderate westerly winds with mostly clear skies and temperatures around freezing.
Snowpack
We saw a few old avalanches that likely ran during or just after the Thanksgiving Week storm cycle on the east-facing side of Elliott Ridge. This all appeared to be small slides, but it was hard to tell since recent snow and wind obscured the debris and crown lines. There was one newer slide that likely ran on the December Drought layer, but it was inside the Eagles Nest Wilderness, so we could not investigate further. This slide was on a northeast-facing slope directly beneath the ridgeline with a one to two foot deep crown. We observed no signs of instability while we were in the field. While we were able to identify the December Drought layer in our snowpits easily, we only got non-propagating results in Extended Column tests in one pit. In other pits, the slab was too thick and dense or it was too thin and soft. We did not get any results in our pits at the interface of the Thanksgiving Week layer and the basal facet layer. All of this suggests that slides on the December Drought layer are becoming less likely, but that they're not out of the question yet. Slides that break deeper seem even less likely, however, the snowpack is not deep enough yet to rule this layer out completely either, especially if we see another storm cycle like the one at the end of November. Several snowmobile tracks were ascending the steep, east-facing part of Elliott Ridge, but I still wouldn't feel comfortable ascending or descending that slope. None of those tracks triggered a slide, but if you found the right trigger point (like a thinner part of the slope) I think you could still cause an avalanche.
Avalanche
We saw three old slides that likely ran during or after the Thanksgiving Week storm and one slide that was more recent. They were are all directly beneath the ridgeline on the east side.