Vail & Summit County
SnowpackJason Konigsberg · Apr 18, 2018 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Clear skies with calm to light ridgetop winds and no wind loading. Temperatures started very cold in the morning and although it felt very warm in the sun, temperatures stayed below freezing at 12k feet.
Snowpack
In the area we traveled we found dense wind drifts up to a foot thick. This wind-drifted snow sits on top of our new crust/dust layer from Tuesday. Drifts would crack under skis but only about 6 inches down, failing on softer snow and not the crust. We triggered one very small avalanche on a southeast-facing slope on a wind-loaded slope. On some slopes the dense wind-driven snow sits near ridgetop and then halfway down there is no new snow and just slide for life conditions on slick crusts. The area we traveled is very wind exposed, and looking at the Tenmile range, exposed crusts were less prominent.---We did not run into any wet snow on the lower angle, alpine slopes we traveled but did observe small wet avalanches on southerly slopes near treeline and a larger wet avalanche off of the southeast face of Peak 1 (see avy obs).---Digging on easterly slopes was difficult due to thick, knife hard crusts. It would take a major storm or incredibly large trigger to affect anything below these crusts.