Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

Jason Konigsberg · Dec 18, 2017 · Vail & Summit County

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Weather

No weather impacting snowpack stability. Warm with overcast skies. Decreasing cloud cover in late afternoon.

Snowpack

Traveled on east to northeast slopes from 10500 to 12k ft. Below treeline the snowpack is faceted top to bottom. The snow depth is 40 cms with the top half advanced facets and the bottom half 3-5mm depth hoar. This snowpack structure continued to ridgetop with slightly more snow (HS=60cms). We saw no signs of any slab on our poor snowpack structure. Looking north towards the rest of Shrine Ridge there may be isolated areas where a slab rests on this poor snowpack structure but for the most part the snowpack is completely faceted.---With a good view out towards Holy Cross, the Gore Range, and other above-treeline areas of the zone, it is hard to find continuous snow coverage in alpine terrain. Any lingering slabs of wind-drifted snow from the last wind event looks to be isolated and not specific in distribution.