Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

Colin Mitchell · Dec 12, 2014 · Vail & Summit County

Weather

Warm day, light winds and lots of sunshine.

Snowpack

Average height of snow was around 24". Previous winds had redistributed the snow into wide drifts and scoured exposed areas. As we ascended towards treeline, snow depths began to drop dramatically, and above treeline there was little snow. The snowpack at treeline varied between supportable slabs where wind had drifted snow, to areas of all facets with just enough cohesion to support a skier, foot pen was to ground. The snow surface on the SW-W-NW aspects we travelled was a 3 cm layer of well developed F hard 2mm FCsf over a crust with more facets (4F). The facets were not sticking to the crust, and blowing around a little. Below this on the NW aspect where we took our obs, we found a 60 cm thick 1 finger slab over 2mm DH (rounding). The slab was likely an old wind slab and was .3 mm rounds down to the 11/22 interface, then facets rounding below that. The 11/22 interface was barely visible and not reactive to tests. The depth hoar layer was moderately reactive, ECTN 21 and ECTP 14 SC Q1