Vail & Summit County
AvalancheKreston Rohrig · Mar 21, 2020 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
The day started off with clear blue skies and intense solar. Clouds started to roll in around noon and the skies greyed by around 2:30. Ridgetop winds were mostly light with a few gusts from the west.
Snowpack
Sunny low elevation slopes got a little cooked this morning, but weren't to the point where wet loose avalanches were an issue. Up higher near and above treeline wind-drifted snow was the primary issue. We saw a rider triggered wind-slab in a steep northeast facing slope. It was small and only entrained the recent storm snow. In this area, there was around 8" of new snow from the past two days that had drifted into stiffer slabs 1-2' deep. In most places the new snow is well bonded, and wind-slab issues seemed to be isolated to steep confined features, and slopes below ridges and cornices.
Avalanche
There were a few avalanches observed and all had similar characteristics. Steep wind-loaded slopes facing north to east. All of the observed avalanches were small ranging from D1-1.5. One was skier triggered off a steep chute near Mt Guyot and the other was seen from a distance on the Bald ridge below a wind-loaded ridge.