Vail & Summit County
AvalancheKreston Rohrig · Dec 25, 2020 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Beautiful day with a few high thin clouds. Warm temps in the afternoon with light winds at ridgetop.
Snowpack
Below treeline we had a few small collapses, but nothing like I felt yesterday on the east side of the 10-mile. I dug on a SSE face on the east ridge of Uneva. This is a prominent feature that gets loaded as winds rip up the I-70 corridor. The only encouraging thing was the facets and depth hoar at the bottom of the snowpack must have gone though a significant melt/freeze cycle earlier in the year, and were fairly frozen together. Above this layer was a small layer of facets below a buried crust, with a thick 1 finger to pencil hard slab on top. We had an ECTP 13 on this layer, which was not encouraging. Similar to other wind-loaded slopes, if there is a slab near the surface, there is a almost certain chance that weak snow lurks below.
Avalanche
A couple of small avalanches were observed across the valley in the Black Lake cliffs. There were skier or snowboard tracks around them, but looked like they were triggered yesterday or the day before.