Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

Anonymous · Apr 3, 2011 · Vail & Summit County

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Weather

(Kelso Ridge) Above about 13K winds were were steady 40s, gusting 60s. Above 13500 occasional gusts were in the 80s as I got knocked down 3 times. Even had my sunglasses blown off by face. Fortunately, a temple piece stuck like a dart into the snow. The winds made the Kelso ridge a bit sporty, which kept be just below the ridge line for most of the upper portions. Very lucky for me was that the winds were only bad for about an hour and gusts dropped significantly with only infrequent blasts for the last portion to the top of Torreys. Also for as hot as it was on Saturday, there was no wet activity in Steven's Gulch on Torreys and none seen at high elevations on surrounding peaks. There wasn't any skiing off the top since I didn't want to ski off the E side of Torreys. I walked the rocks down to the Grays-Torreys saddle. Sadly, not enough snow to ski, but from the saddle down I had nice skiing all the way back to Bakerville.

Snowpack

Reported 13 slides which ran between Wednesday and Friday. Some of these were already reported, such as Develi's Tool, Independence Mtn & East Wall at Abasin so I did not enter them into DB. A few slides on Torreys I did add