Vail & Summit County
SnowpackNate Liles · Apr 20, 2011 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Broken clouds, warming very quickly at lower elevations. Winds gusty but mostly calm below 4000m then sustained 20km+ on ridges.
Snowpack
30 to 60 cm of new soft slab on top of supportable melt freeze crust. Seems to have bonded quite well on this aspect (4th of July bowl skiers left 20m below summit) found lots of depth hoar near rocks and shallow areas. Tests revealed several layers within the new snow, looks like different wind slabs that have bonded fairly well. Shovel tilt resulted in q1 shear within top 20cm but took moderate to hard hits to release, tap test resulted in ct19 releasing on the melt freeze/new snow interface with q2 shear.