Vail & Summit County
AvalancheJason Konigsberg · May 4, 2025 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Partly cloudy and mild. Windy at ridgetop.
Snowpack
The top 6 to 10 cm of snow is composed of melt forms. This top layer softened in the morning. Below this is a thick, 20 to 30 cm, knife-hard melt-freeze crust. This thicker crust formed during cool weather earlier this week and has not melted, even with warm weather the past few days. The snow crystals below the crust are dependent on aspect. On southerly slopes, there are ice bodies and hard crusts mostly to the ground. On an east-facing slope that I dug on, I found very small, hard, rounded grains. There were no interfaces of concern for future wet slab avalanches, such as finer-grained snow over coarse-grained snow. On a north-facing slope at around 12,000 feet, the surface snow was moist and had not yet transitioned to melt forms. This was only the top 5 cm. Below this, the snowpack is very hard, mostly dry, but homogenous. Although the temperature of the snowpack is likely not isothermal, the lack of a temperature gradient over a sustained period of time has resulted in rounding throughout and a homogenous, strong snowpack with little layering. The dust layer that blew in during the April storm is buried 30 cm deep, with no weakness noted around this layer. It's more a discoloration in the snowpack than an actual layer. For the incoming storm, it's hard to say any particular surface layer is concerning. If I had to pick one, it would be the thin layer of clustered melt forms or polycrystals that sit above the shallowly buried (~ 5 cm) dusty melt-freeze crust. If this layer gets buried when wet, it could be a layer of concern with a thick new slab of snow. It's not alarming, just something to watch.
Avalanche
Old, small avalanche noted on Uneva Peak