Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

Jason Konigsberg · Nov 24, 2016 · Vail & Summit County

View on map

Weather

Sky cleared throughout the morning.

Snowpack

Looking at a north-northeast aspect near treeline, I found a snow depth of between 20 to 45cms. In small areas that were recently wind loading I could get cracks radiating from my skis. The failure plane was the interface between older snow that has faceted and the storm snow of the last week. One stability test showed an ECTPV result on this layer. In this particular area the basal snow was not depth hoar, but small-grained facets. Also in this area, the snowpack is to shallow to produce avalanches.