Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

Andrew McWilliams · Apr 8, 2023 · Vail & Summit County

Weather

Broken skies became overcast with southwest winds that increased to moderate by the time I was leaving. Temperatures quickly rose to the low thirties, but didn't get much warmer due to the wind and cloud cover.

Snowpack

Touring up through west-facing trees below treeline there was a crust from warm temperatures the days prior in most areas. In shadier areas, there was still soft snow on the surface that was dry, but becoming moist. The crust was not supportable to skis below treeline on the descent. Near treeline on north and northeast aspects, there was a few cm of soft snow above a pencil to knife-hard layer that was supportable to uphill and downhill travel. This crust began as a wind layer but showed melt forms under magnification. This layer includes the dust from the strong southwest winds earlier in the week. I saw the obvious dust layer in one pit on a north aspect, but not in another on a northeast. My pit on a north aspect showed a rounding snowpack about 150 to 200cm deep. The bottom portion is still composed of faceted grains, but the only results in an Extended Column Test (ECT) were non-propagating and associated with crust layers in the upper snowpack. I dug this pit near the runout of an avalanche path. My pit on a northeast aspect closer to the start zone of the same path told a different story. The snow here was much deeper, 225cm to 275cm, with less rounding. There were still faceted grains in the upper snowpack and one layer about 50cm from the surface had a propagating result in an ECT after nine taps from the shoulder. Both snowpits had easy to moderate non-propagating ECT results associated with the dust layer crust near the surface. I only saw evidence of one Loose Wet avalanche on nearby slopes. This was a very small slide and was composed of surface snow running on the dust layer beneath a cliff on a west-facing slope. There was a skier-triggered avalanche in the Mexican Hat couloir on a south-facing flank that broke on the crust layer buried by the storm on March 31st. This avalanche was previously reported here: https://avalanche.state.co.us/observations/field-report/5a985e70-705f-40d3-889e-670348094ae0.