Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

Jason Konigsberg, Teague Holmes · Jan 16, 2024 · Vail & Summit County

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Weather

Skies cleared out by noon. Winds increased with widespread blowing snow observed on surrounding high peaks in the afternoon. The winds looked too strong for effective loading and the direction of the snow plumes off of ridgetop were directed into the sky meaning more sublimination than loading. On my drive I noticed westerly above treeline slopes were stripped of snow.

Snowpack

The snowpack is quite simple with a thick mostly cohesive slab of snow sitting over very weak facets and depth hoar. The slab is connected especially due to the settlement and cohesiveness of the snow that fell from January 4 to 10. This one-finger hard portion of the slab is 30 cm thick and sits directly above the basal facets. 40 cm of softer, more recent storm snow sits above the harder portion of the slab. The basal facets at the ground are a 30 to 50 cm thick layer, and generally fist hard, with the top portion being the weakest. We only dug on a north-facing below-treeline slope. This area was very thin prior to the January storms and is typical of the weaker snowpack areas that are found in Summit County. We performed on extended column test and got a result of ECTP15 at the top of basal facets.