Vail & Summit County
SnowpackAndrew McWilliams · Mar 25, 2023 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Below zero temperatures and overcast skies with light snowfall and moderate winds from the northwest. There was no significant accumulation of snow by noon.
Snowpack
The snowpack was generally supportable below treeline on westerly-facing slopes. There were some areas, especially near bushes and trees, where I was able to sink more deeply into the snowpack. The snow depth near treeline where I dug a snowpit averaged about 200cm. The snowpack consisted of about 60cm of decomposing grains and precipitation particles near the surface with a fragile melt-freeze crust about 40cm from the top. Below this was a pencil-hard layer (on the Hand Hardness Scale) of rounded grains above one-finger hard layer of rounding facets for the remaining 80cm of the snowpit. I stopped digging about 80cm from the ground. There were no results in an Extended Column Test and a Compression Test had a broken result after 7 taps from the elbow (17 total taps) and a sudden collapse after 7 taps from the shoulder (27 total). The broken result failed below the fragile melt-freeze crust and the sudden collapse was at the interface of the decomposing grains and the pencil-hard rounds. I ascended the west ridge of Grizzly Peak to the above treeline elevation band and noted lots of cracking in recently wind-drifted snow. These cracks were very shallow, but the wind had just increased and these developing slabs were likely deeper within leeward terrain features. I descended a westerly slope with no signs of instability, but I avoided the wind-loaded southerly-facing flank.