Vail & Summit County
AvalancheAndrew McWilliams · Mar 19, 2024 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Clear skies, calm winds, temperatures near freezing.
Snowpack
There was a crust of varying thickness on east to south-facing slopes where I traveled on near and below treeline slopes. In places you can break through it, but in others it was three inches thick and supportable to boot travel. At the upper end of the near treeline elevation band, the crusts were fewer and thinner, but the slabs of recent snow were thicker. I got a propagating result in an Extended Column Test (ECT) after 8 taps from the elbow on a layer of rounding facets 70-90cm from the surface in one snowpit, in another pit, this layer wasn't reactive. In one snowpit there were non-propagating failures in upper crust layers, but again, not in the other. In both snowpits on southeast-facing slopes, the dust layer had melted into a crust about 30-50cm from the surface. On a northeast-facing below-treeline slope there was also a weak layer about a meter from the surface. Here, it was rounding surface hoar that was no longer upright - likely the widespread weak layer formed around 2/2. The dust layer was also prominent in the upper snowpack about 40cm from the surface. There were no results in an ECT at this location. There was a generally homogenous slab, except for the 2/2 layer, that got harder as it got deeper with soft, faceted snow on the surface that transitioned to a one-finger slab becoming pencil-hard a meter deep.
Avalanche
There were some small Wet Loose avalanches in the "caldera" of Buffalo Mountain and off the southeast face of Red Peak.