Vail & Summit County

Avalanche

Scott Toepfer · May 7, 2015 · Vail & Summit County

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Weather

Broken clouds interspersed with blue sky and snow showers. Full mixed bag of cloud cover. Any sun brought quick warm-up.

Snowpack

Dusting of new snow, if anything, seems to have insulated the old snow from much of a freeze. At 10 AM boot penetration was to boot top. This upper 6 to 8" of snow was moist to wet, though could not squeeze water out with gloved hand. There's been an ongoing cycle of wet slabs small wet loose, and large wet loose avalanches for several days now.

Avalanche

There was a cycle of small Storm Slabs off east aspects of Peak 9 & Peak 6 on the east side of the Tenmile Range Thursday morning the 7th. These probably ran as soon as the sun hit. Just new snow, but most if not all 12 that I saw were slabs. Two new avalanches in Tenmile Canyon from the 6th. Monroe(WSNR2D2) & Big Sam (UNR2D2+) Both large.