Vail & Summit County
SnowpackAndrew McWilliams · Feb 1, 2023 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Clear skies and below-zero temperatures to start the day. Temperatures climbed into the teens by noon and a few clouds appeared in the sky. Winds were light from the NW.
Snowpack
Supportable travel and widespread surface hoar development on west through north to northeast-facing slopes were observed on the ascent. No signs of instability, like cracking and collapsing, were noted on the ascent or descent. There was a thin one-finger hard wind crust on the west side of the ridge near treeline. Small ski-width pockets of this crust were easily pushed with skis on steep wind rolls. Above treeline areas look wind-affected, but the surface snow just below ridgetop near treeline was still low-density and lacked any slab quality. The most recent storm snow is becoming a future weak-layer with near-surface faceting occurring in the top 10-20cm of the snow in addition to the surface hoar that makes up the top 2cm of the surface snow. These snow crystal forms were noted on all of the aspects noted above. I dug two snowpits at about 11,800ft (one on a west aspect and one on a north aspect) and both had non-propagating results in the upper layers of the snowpack in Extended Column Tests. Both of these pits had hard (taps from the shoulder) propagating results at the interface with the depth hoar layer about 30-40cm up from the ground. The depth of snow on the north-facing slope was about 130 to 160cm of snow. On the west-facing slopes, the depth of snow was 100 to 130cm. On both slopes, wind drifts were up to 200cm deep. A snowpit in a sheltered area below treeline on a northeast-facing slope was 120cm deep and also had propagating results in Extended Column Tests at the interface with the depth hoar layer. These were triggered with taps from the elbow and the interface was also about 30cm up from the ground.