Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

Mike Floyd · Mar 11, 2021 · Vail & Summit County

Weather

Calm with occasional light southwest winds, partly cloudy skies.

Snowpack

The snowpack in this part of the Gore Range is 150-200 cm deep below the treeline's upper end. I traveled up on southwest, west, northwest, and down on north, and northeast aspects. I found no signs of instability on my tour. I dug a pit on a northeast-facing slope at 11,000 ft where I found 190 cm of snow. The snow in this spot was less wind-affected than I expected and F to 1F from top to bottom in the upper 80 cm. A few faceted layers of weak snow exist on the borders of stiffer slabs below this, but they were unreactive to stability tests. The lower snowpack was predominantly 1F to 4F hardness, without the large, weak basal depth hoar and chains I've been used to finding this season. There is soft basal snow of F to 4F hardness, but the snow near the ground is gaining strength, and the grains show signs of rounding. We are not out of the woods, but there are signs that the snowpack can handle some loading without the deep reactivity we are accustomed to seeing this season. A few areas had a thin melt-freeze crust about 20 cm down from recent warm weather, but this crust was weak and discontinuous and fresh snow from the last couple of days was well-bonded.