Vail & Summit County

Generally, S -1 snowfall with light winds from the southwest. Alternating periods of broken skies and S2 snowfall. There was about 5 cm of new snow.

In my snowpit on a northeast-facing near-treeline slope, a 20cm thick slab formed near the end of January is capping a weak snowpack. Below this slab, a layer of facets under a weak, decomposing melt-freeze crust is the layer of concern. I got a propagating result in an Extended Column Test after only 5 taps from the wrist in this layer. I specifically chose a place where I found a slab. It didn't seem like the slab was evenly distributed on this slope, but on east and southeast-facing slopes nearby, it did. There was about 10cm of new snow here, with the light winds it wasn't forming a new slab. Given the weakness of the overall snowpack, slides could easily step down into the faceted snow below the layer of concern. I didn't see the December 18 dirty wind layer here, so it was harder to discern the timing of the different layers. The middle and lower snowpack here was entirely faceted grains, with a series of older wind-packed and crust layers with softer snow between. The depth of the hoar layer at the ground was only about 15cm thick and wasn't concerning in my snowpit. I crossed a south-facing slope just on the other side of the ridge on the way to my snowpit. I got a small collapse on this slope in a similar weak layer to what I saw in the snowpit. This slope was lower-angled and sheltered, so maybe less representative of a proper steep, open, south-facing slope. On the west-facing slopes I ascended, the snow ranged across a variety of conditions. Supportable crusts, breakable crusts, fully-facted, and supportable, cold, dry snow. Nothing seemed consistent enough yet for a problem, but with a generally weak snowpack near and below treeline on westerly-facing slopes, we likely need to expand the distribution of the Persistent Slab problem with bigger storm. I saw some very minor cracking in new, soft cornice, but nothing broke or cracked on the slope below. If you found two or three times as much storm snow and a bit more wind, avalanches would be likely.