Vail & Summit County
AvalancheJason Konigsberg · Mar 6, 2025 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Overcast and mild to start the day. The new snow was moist first thing at low elevations. Snow picked up around 1 PM with snowfall rates of up to 2" per hour. The heavy snow didn't last long, and clouds were broken by the time I left. It was quite warm, with the March sun popping out. It looked like there were a couple of small loose wet avalanches on the south face of Bald Mountain from this hit of sun, but couldn't confirm.
Snowpack
Once I got to 11,000 feet near the ridgetop I experienced numerous collapses and some shooting cracks. These collapses were due to the weak layer of faceted snow buried about 30 cm down. I dug on a north-facing slope at this elevation and got a result of ECTP10 on the March 3 layer. The snowpack was a little over 2 meters deep. In fact, everywhere I probed that hadn't avalanches this season, was over 2 meters deep. After digging this snowpit, I walked a little higher and saw two avalanches in the first bowl that drops down to Gore Creek. A party was walking on the ridge and remotely triggered one avalanche on an east-facing slope that broke on the shallowly buried layer. Another avalanche ran sympathetically that broke at the ground on a north-facing portion of the bowl. I continued up the ridge and continued to get collapses. I didn't see that I triggered any avalanches, though visibility was not good. Everywhere I dug along the ridge, I found the nicely preserved layer of facets below the now-cohesive slab of recent storm snow. Although the wind was drifting snow, I didn't find recent wind slab development. The slab over the weak layer is slightly thicker near ridgetop where there is drifting, but tests and recent remote triggers shows this problem should be treated as a Persistent Slab avalanche problem. I would expect to find this problem and trigger avalanches, anywhere there is a cohesive slab of snow regardless of drifting. The mid to lower end of the below treeline elevation is much quieter and the snowpack is consolidating with springtime temps.
Avalanche
The avalanches I observed are mentioned above. I also observed an avalanche across the road in East Vail in a path locally known as Old Man's. We received information that this was a rider triggered avalanche on Wednesday (3/4/25). The rider was not caught in the avalanche.