Vail & Summit County
SnowpackJason Konigsberg · Apr 2, 2024 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Cold start to the morning. Temperatures rose quickly in the late morning. Calm winds near and below treeline. Breezy and much cooler abvoe treeline.
Snowpack
The snowpack near treeline is between 2 and 3 meters deep on northerly-facing slopes. Southerly slopes are holding just about 2 meters of snow. The most concerning layer is the layer of facets that was buried on March 23. This is only a concern on northerly slopes near and above treeline. This layer is 70 cm from the surface. the 70 cm slab is progressively harder from top to bottom, from fist hard at the top to one-finger hard above the weak layer. The dust layer is not a persistent weak layer but it is interesting to see the depth as we know when it was buried (March 3). The dust is 110 cm from the surface. I also dug on an east-southeast-facing slope near treeline. This snowpack was 2 meters deep. The surface snow was moist. There was a thin layer of facets above a knife-hard crust 45 cm from the surface. The main concern with this snowpack structure is meltwater getting to the faceted layer above the hard crust. We could see wet slabs avalanches if this happens. Even if we don't get wet slabs, water moving through this dry snow would create large loose wet gouging avalanches. The most concerning aspects for either wet slabs or deeper gouging avalanches are east, southeast, and west near treeline. Maybe northwest near treeline too. This is where the snowpack has yet to transition to a springtime snowpack. At lower elevations and on south and southwest slopes, it's less likely that avalanches will gouger into a hard snowpack that has already seen meltwater. Most northerly slopes near and above treeline are staying dry and cool...so far.