Vail & Summit County

I saw several old avalanches, mostly wet snow avalanches on Black Mountain and the Kitchen Wall, but you could also still see the crown of an old persistent slab avalanche in Marjorie Bowl that ran before the late-March warmup.

Broken skies and light winds with moderate to strong gusts from the west and southwest. It was just below freezing when I left the truck.

There was about 5 to 10cm of dense new snow resting on a 5cm-thick melt-freeze crust. With strong winds, the new snow was blown into isolated drifts in terrain catches and below ridges. Drifting was discontinuous below ridges and mostly isolated to just below the ridgetop. This new snow was unreactive in my pit and on the test slopes I traveled on. I did get a propagating result in an Extended Column Test (ECT) at the interface between a thick slab and moist, soft, weak snow extending to the ground. A Propagation Saw Test also got a result to end at this interface. However, with a thick, strong crust near the surface, and a thick, dense slab above the weaker snow, I think it's unlikely you'd trigger an avalanche on this layer. Below treeline, on a westerly-facing slope, I found a 20-centimeter-thick melt freeze crust that was mostly supportable. When I dug down, I found more moist facets below that crust extending to the ground. There was some localized collapsing around my skis in a few places. Even though there is still moist to wet unconsolidated snow at lower elevations, there was no slab, and when the surface crust breaks down, there isn't the structure for slab avalanches.