Vail & Summit County
SnowpackJason Konigsberg, Ian Fowler · Apr 11, 2025 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Clear and warm with light breezes at ridgetop
Snowpack
The snowpack on west and southwest-facing slopes in the Buck avalanche path start zone averaged 130 cm deep. Snow coverage and snow depths seem to be average or a little above average for this time of year. Although there is enough snow in start zones to produce large avalanches, the snowpack stability is good, and the structure is not conducive to widely breaking Wet Slab avalanches. We found a 10 to 15 cm knife-hard crust near the surface. Below this crust, there were softer layers of melt forms and thicker and harder crusts. Layers near the ground were moist. We did not find any dry layers or interfaces of concern where meltwater would pool, creating Wet Slab avalanches. The only concern for larger avalanches in these paths would be for gouging Loose Wet avalanches if we had several above-freezing nights and the whole snowpack became cohesionless. On a northwest-facing slope in the Buck avalanche path start zone, the snow depth was 130cm. About half of this depth was rounding facets and depth hoar, and half was rounds and crusts. A crust about 10cm deep is the layer of concern for wet avalanches, but with the recent warm-up, water has only penetrated the upper 3cm. On due north aspects in the alpine, you could still find cold, soft, dappled snow giving fun skiing. As mentioned above, the most concerning aspect, on which we traveled, for small Loose Wet avalanche is east-facing slopes. We did not find any evidence of a melt-freeze cycle within the recent early April storm snow. This snow was becoming moist. If we were traveling on slopes close to 40 degrees, we feel confident we could have triggered some wet avalanches in the moist snow running on a crust buried 20 cm deep.