Vail & Summit County
AvalancheKreston Rohrig · Feb 14, 2019 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Warm in the valley floor with temps in the mid-30s. Light snow showers lingered throughout the day with 5" of dense snow on the ground from last night. Light southerly winds had a hard time moving the dense, well-bonded snow.
Snowpack
A mixed bag depending on aspect and elevation. On a north facing slope in a protected area at 11400' I found 120cm of weak snow with a 4F mid-pack slab that was barely supportable sitting over 40cm of 5mm depth hoar. Not an ideal set up for a big storm to fall on. Higher up on a NE facing slope at 11600' in a wind-effected area the snowpack was only 90cm deep and was comprised or weak facet layers sandwiched between rock hard slabs with depth hoar at the bottom. An ideal set up for avalanches to break in the upper snowpack on weak layers of facets and then step down to weak layers further down. Lastly, I dug on a SE facing slope at 12100' and found 220cm of consolidated snow with very few layers of concern. Bottom line, there is a lot of variability in the snowpack which changes in a short distance with aspect and elevation. Conditions will be tricky as more heavy wet snow continues to pile up and test the myriad of weak layers throughout the snowpack.
Avalanche
None observed