Vail & Summit County

Clear skies. Temperatures started out in the 10s and quickly increased to the low 30s. Light winds, no discernible direction.

I dug on easterly-facing slopes at the upper and lower end of near treeline. The large avalanche I was looking at likely ran on the layer buried around February 11 - but it's hard to say at this point. It stepped down in multiple places as well. I couldn't easily discern the December 18 dirty crust layer here. In all my snowpits, there were multiple weak layers in the upper snowpack, but test results were always about 60 to 80cm deep. I didn't get results in all of my snowpit tests, and when I did, they were always after more than 5 taps from the elbow. The weak layer the slide ran on was faceted, but showing signs of rounding, and was about 50 to 70 cm from the surface. While weak layers in the snowpack are becoming less reactive, they're widespread across easterly-facing terrain. Slides can propagate widely and break deeply if you find the wrong spot on a slope. Below treeline, the snowpack was close to a meter deep on average, and at upper elevations, it ranged between 125 and 175cm. There was widespread surface hoar development with clear skies and light winds - we'll see if it holds up to warm temperatures and wind before the next storm. I found grains that were more than 2cm, but most ranged from 1 to 6mm. There were some roller balls on the south-facing rocky slopes from yesterday.