Vail & Summit County
AvalancheAnonymous · Dec 21, 2022 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Began from trailhead at 8:30am, skies were overcast with the sun starting to burn clouds to the east, wind was calm. As the day continued, the clouds moved back in, wind increased, and snow began to fall. By 11:00am wind was in full force and snow was consistently falling.
Snowpack
Toured through north-east facing terrain where snow was deposited by wind near tree line. Snowpack depth quickly went from 20cm to a consistent 60-70cm. Dug a quick pit and particularly took note to the lower 28cm of the snowpack consisted of F to 4F firm facets on top of a 15cm P firm slab from of the wind. Did not observe any shooting cracks and the upper slab was mostly supportable to skis. There was a hollow sound in places. I then toured to the ridge before the parking lot. Here, I also dug a pit. The snow depth was highly variable and I chose to dig the pit on an east aspect near tree line at 11,700 feet. The snow surface was very hard making uphill travel with skins without crampons difficult. The upper slab was very firm (P+), and facets have grown in size from the observations from this area in the last 10 days. Observed the same hollow sound and feeling when traveling on and near this layer. Some facets have grown to 6mm in size.
Avalanche
The avalanche appears to be the same slide path as the fatal accident from the 2021/22 season. Estimated to be an east aspect, 11,800 feet. Avalanche appears to have run naturally sometime in the past 1-5 days, it is difficult to estimate as the wind has really blown things around.