Selling of the Soul of EV

I was approached by the devil.

He said, “you know a place. I want to know it to. I’ll give you shiny things and make you feel like a big man.”

“What do I have to do?” I said.

“Tell me it’s secrets.” He said with a black grin, “if you don’t someone else will.”

-East Vail Parable

It’s a critical period in the development of the snowpack. Periods of warm clear weather between snowfalls early season combined with the warm ground leads to the changing of the fallen snow into a loose facet layer. Surface hoar will also be developing and tends to stick around in wind protected areas to be buried by future snowfall, creating a good failure layer as well. The longer the periods between early storms the worse the deterioration in the early season snow. Facet and surface hoar layers have been known to “heal” within the snow pack with consistent temps and snowfall over time. Usually, for us, the base layer of facets sticks around for us for a good while, until redistributed by a slide cycle.

The exposed West Wall areas will begin developing its series of crust layers caused by the high, intense sun on the E facing snow, warming then refreezing at night. All aspects will be eagerly waiting for a big November dump to initiate the first cycle of the year. This is speculation, but based on the typical pattern of early season snow pack development, it’s a decent guess.

Wasn’t too long between these last two storms, so that is a good thing. It does look like another extended period of warming clear weather on tap after tomorrow, so we will start the pattern again, and keep our eyes peeled. A solid dump in Vail today with a light 8 inches on the deck in West Vail, moderate wind, cold temps. Yeya.

Hope to have an actual snow report from up there before too long.