Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

Austin DiVesta · Jan 18, 2022 · Vail & Summit County

Weather

Warm and mostly sunny today. High Clouds started to move into the area towards mind afternoon with still fairly light winds from the west.

Snowpack

The snow surface dramatically changes as you move around the compass. Slopes with more of a southern tilt to them hard harboring a thick sun crust about an inch thick in places that give way to weak snow right below the surface. Once you move towards northerly and east-facing slopes, you can find a soft supportable upper 6 inches of snow. As we continue to have warm days and cool nights, this layer will deteriorate into a future problem. I dug a snowpit on a northeast aspect near treeline and found a snow height of about 115cm with a reasonably strong midpack structure with old, weak basal layers. I did not get any propagation results on an extended column test. One thing to note, I did give the column an extra tap from the shoulder, which produced propagation, but could not replicate the result in the next test. A propagation saw test resulted in 77/115 roughly 35cm from the ground that self arrested in front of the saw (Arr). While the snowpack is gaining strength, we the structure to produce large avalanches.