Vail & Summit County

Avalanche

Kreston Rohrig · Mar 16, 2019 · Vail & Summit County

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Weather

Warm and sunny day. Light breeze at ridgetop, but otherwise spectacular.

Snowpack

We dug up near the upper crown line on a SE facing slope around 12700'. The recent storm snow from the beginning of March has settled into a 50-70cm 1 finger slab that is strong and dense. Below this the interface was faceted, but well bonded. ECTX even with super hard banging on the shovel post test. The lower snowpack was mostly consolidated facets or rounded facets that were well bonded. My guess with this avalanche is that there was a buried crust/facet layer deeper in the snowpack on the southerly face that failed or a weaker layer of basal facets. The face that slid was super steep and clearly the snowpack couldn't handle the rapid load from recent snowfall and NW winds.

Avalanche

The large avalanche on Buffalo was recorded previously, but we did see another large debris pile off the west face and another widely propagating avalanche off of the east ridge of Red Peak.