Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

Ryan Zarter · Mar 7, 2024 · Vail & Summit County

Weather

Broken skies with temperatures in the teens. An occasional flurry with no real accumulation. Light winds out of the SW.

Snowpack

You can bury 3m probe in the chub at the top of the Professor without hitting the ground. Lower down I found a much shallower snowpack (about 100cm to 130cm where I probed). The early February weak interface was not reactive where I dug, and the melt-freeze crust that was associated with this interface on southeast aspects has faceted away. The most concerning layer in the upper snowpack is at the interface of our most recent storm, about 25cm below the surface where I dug, where a layer of near surface facets lays buried on top of a melt-freeze crust. I had a propagating ECT result on this layer, though I currently don't think the slab on top of this layer is capable of widespread propagation. There is dust in the recently deposited storm snow immediately above this interface. I had some localized collapsing traveling across the flats around Pass Lake on the way back to the truck.