Front Range
SnowpackAndrew McWilliams · Oct 30, 2023 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Clear skies with light winds and moderate gusts from the north.
Snowpack
Northerly winds were cross-loading snow into gully features and forming one-finger (on the Hand Hardness Scale) slabs just below the ridgeline. When I approached a drifted pillow on a northeast-facing slope just below the ridge, a small area cracked and collapsed at an interface of harder and softer storm snow about 10-15cm below the surface. In most places the snowpack lacked any slab quality and boot penetration was to the ground. Areas that held snow previously had about 10cm of large faceted grains on the ground. Otherwise, the snowpack consisted of decomposing fragments and ranged from 20-65cm deep. A snowpit adjacent to the area that cracked and collapsed had a failure on isolation for both an Extended Column Tests (ECT) and a Compression Tests (CT). Another snowpit in a similar area got moderate non-propagating results on the same layer. Both an ECT and CT did not yield any results at the interface with the old snow from earlier in October.