Vail & Summit County

There were a few D1s in an area locally known as Gen X Bowl. I also observed a couple of small avalanches on the south face of Bald Mountain

Breezy near treeline with winds lightly drifting snow on to east-facing slopes. No wind below treeline. Skies mostly clear with high cloud increasing in the afternoon. Cool temps.

I wanted to travel in this area to confirm Low danger below treeline and compare the snowpack to areas I traveled in Summit County. I found a similar snowpack. The snowpack was mostly faceted where it wasn't affected by the wind. Snow depths are slightly deeper, and coverage is generally better than in Summit County, with about 70 cm at 10,000 feet and close to 100 cm at 11,000 feet. Recent winds drifted snow into hard slabs directly below ridgetop. I approached a wind loaded slopes and got a deep crack through the slope, but no avalanche. There isn't much more to say about this relatively simple snowpack. Northeast-facing slopes had a buried, fragile, mostly decomposed rain crust and east-facing slopes had melt-freeze crust that was more solid at the same depth. These crusts are fairly irrelevant as the snowpack is mostly weak snow, so worrying about a specific part of the weak snowpack, when we know a large avalanche would gouge through everything, isn't necessary. The main concern right now, is triggering a relatively small avalanche in drifted snow near ridgetop that picks up steam and gouges into the faceted snowpack, increasing in size as it entrains the season's snowpack. For the future, it's an awful snowpack. The only saving grace is that any large storm would crush the snowpack, and it would be easy to predict. If we get into a cycle with a series of small storms that slowly build slabs, this would be the worst-case scenario, and avalanches could grow quite large, releasing more intermittently.