Vail & Summit County
AvalancheKreston Rohrig · Jan 18, 2020 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Lingering orographics kept the skies obscured and light snowfall throughout the day. Accumulations of low density snow crept up to 5cm. Surprisingly, the winds were fairly calm.
Snowpack
The snowpack in this area is a mixed bag. There was a couple inches of super light snow from today that fell on anything from rock hard to super soft surfaces. Northerly facing slopes near and above treeline looked to be ravaged by recent winds, while easterly to southeast maintained most of the recent load. Drifted spots on south to southeast facing slopes had a nice soft slab with a few denser layers up to 40cm thick. This slab was nonreactive in two pit locations/tests. In one location we dug in a thinner spot and found 120cm of snow with a pencil hard melt/freeze crust 25cm up from the ground. Above this is a weak 10cm layer of facets, which is supporting a the rest of the snowpack. Even with this poor structure, nothing failed or propagated in ECTs. 50 meters away on a deeper wind-drifted shoulder, the snowpack was 175cm deep, with varying buried near surface facet layers and slabs from pencil to 4 finger (see profile). Again, no failures or propagation here either.
Avalanche
None observed that were fresh.