Vail & Summit County
SnowpackJason Konigsberg, Mike Cooperstein · Mar 11, 2025 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Mostly clear with high clouds increasing. Light to moderate winds near the ridgetop were keeping things cool.
Snowpack
On a north-facing near treeline slope we found a snowpack that ranged from 160 to 190 cm. Although the bottom half of the snowpack is composed of faceted crystals, the hardness is generally one-finger or one-finger minus. There aren't any defined, thinner, softer layers as the December 9th layer once was. This snowpack structure fits the bill of large load or very large trigger (like big cornice fall) to initiate deeper avalanches. The snowpack was about 140 cm deep on a southeast-facing near treeline slope. The upper snowpack has seen previous meltwater that is now refrozen into ice bodies throughout the top 30 cm of the pack. There is no upper-snowpack slab from March storms. In fact there isn't much of a slab at all, just intermittent sometimes crusts and then weaker and drier snow near the ground. Moving around to east-facing slopes, the snowpack is quite similar, but with less moist snow at the surface and thinner crusts in the upper snowpack. While we were descending, we quickly looked at a northwest-facing slope at 10,400 ft. We found a snowpack that was only 120 cm deep with very weak, fist-hard, basal facets near the ground. The slab overtop was generally thin and this is likely not a problem now, but we can't count out northerly below treeline slopes if we were to get a large storm.