Vail & Summit County
AvalancheJason Konigsberg · Apr 21, 2023 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Cold, snowy, and blustery. Winds were drifting snow but as mentioned above, more cornice building then effective on-slope drifting. There was about 6 inches of storm snow near and above treeline from the last few days. Much less below treeline.
Snowpack
Not much additional to add. While we were out there weren't many avalanche issues to worry about. We went looking for wind slabs on steep south-facing slopes and did not find any. The storm snow seems to be bonded well to underlying melt-freeze crusts. It's currently snowing (8 PM Fri) and temperatures are warming so we could see some more instabilities within the storm snow on Saturday.
Avalanche
Triggered a couple of very small Loose Dry avalanches on steep south-facing slopes. These small avalanches only entrained the top two inches of storm snow and didn't run on the buried crust.