Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

Brent Herring · Feb 1, 2019 · Vail & Summit County

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Weather

Blue Bird; 20-35 deg; no discernible wind on the ridge at 12300ft

Snowpack

Pencil-knife hard sastrugi on the upper portion of the NE slope. Chalky, impenetrable wind crust up top evolving to perfect soft wind buff for maybe 300 ft, then deteriorating to punchy conditions NTL. Dug around at 11400ft at time 11:00; E aspect (100 deg); compression zone of the slope. Total depth 185cm. ~5 cm ski penetration. Surface wetted. Top ~50+cm consolidated, finger+ hard. Took a lot of force to get the probe down to the ground. Didn't dig deep enough to observe crusts/weak layers lower in the snowpack. With so much variability above, didn't feel like this thicker observed snowpack was representative of the rest of the slope. Observed small solar sloughing from rock outcropping on the adjacent steeper ESE open slope.