Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

Mike Floyd, Kreston Rohrig · Nov 20, 2020 · Vail & Summit County

Weather

Warm conditions with light ridgetop winds out of the southwest. Firm surface conditions from the trailhead. Light winds and increasing cloud cover kept surface conditions firm throughout the trip.

Snowpack

The snowpack ranged from 20 cm to 80 cm in the areas we travelled. Recent warm temperatures consolidated the snowpack and slowed the development of basal facets. Southeast aspects are very shallow and are melting out around shallow rocks and bushes. Where snow remains, it is capped by a 10 cm melt freeze crust. North and northeast aspects retain weak structure with mostly <1 mm basal facets. In a few isolated areas we found larger facets but they were confined to areas where the snowpack was affected by vegetation. There just isn't enough continuity of this weak layer to get wider avalanches across terrain features. On a north-northeast aspect with HS 75 cm I had an ECTP 7 on <1 mm facets at the ground. So the structure for avalanches exists but the low volume of snow and poorly connected weak layers limits current avalanche activity.