Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

Jason Konigsberg · Apr 14, 2022 · Vail & Summit County

Weather

Wind loading was intense on upper-elevation easterly slopes. It was a cold morning especially with the wind. By afternoon the wind let up a bit and it felt warmer. There is about 12 inches of snow from the storm that started on the night of April 11.

Snowpack

I looked at the snowpack structure mainly on northerly near to below treeline slopes. I found a snowpack height of about 2 meters. The dry spell faceted layer was about 90 cm deep. It has gained some strength and is now four-finger plus to one-finger-minus in hand hardness. Also, the weakest part of this layer is not that different, in hardness, from the layers above and below. It is more "blended in". No propagating results in extended column tests. In this particular area, triggering a deep avalanche would be isolated to the steepest and rockiest terrain that also hasn't been scoured by northerly winds and has a more even snow distribution. A lot of qualifiers.---Attention turns to our new weak layer. There is a distinct layer of small faceted crystals beneath a melt freeze crust buried 30 cm from the surface. I mostly traveled on sheltered slopes, so there wasn't much of a slab to collapse the layer. I did get one propagating result of ECTP18. On these northerly slopes, this melt-freeze crust is fragile and it is easy to poke a ski pole through it.---North-facing ATL slopes did not look wind-loaded. The wind loaded was much more concentrated on easterly slopes, especially due east near ridgetop.---All aspects near and above treeline had cold wintery snow, unless they were scoured by winds, then it was just ice. This cold snow will be an issue once the sun comes out. Any period of extended sun will cause numerous wet avalanches.---The melt-freeze crust mentioned above was much harder and supportable on southerly slopes with no faceted snow below.