Vail & Summit County
AvalancheBen Pritchett · Feb 7, 2024 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Off and on snow all day, but little accumulation. Westerly winds picked up in the afternoon and moved snow efficiently.
Snowpack
The biggest concern are slopes where the wind drifts snow above a layer of buried Surface Hoar hiding ~15-25 cm down from the snow surface. In this location, the surface hoar is easy to find on almost any northerly or easterly-facing feature above about 11,000 feet, even in alpine start zones, which is unusual. Drifting snow during the day was enough to make this setup touchy. Every drifted slope I touched cracked, and the steeper ones avalanched around a foot deep when I walked on lower-angle terrain above the start zones. The last few days of warm weather has created stiff crusts on sun-exposed slopes near and below treeline. On steeper-angle southerly slopes, these crusts are supportive to skis and knife-to-ice-hard. Free water has drained deeply into the shallow snowpack. As the lattice of crusts and ice columns freezes (it was moist still in the snowpack today), these southerly-facing slopes will not harbor any avalanche concerns in the short term.
Avalanche
Triggered 3 small avalanches on steep wind-drifted easterly-facing slopes.