Steamboat & Flat Tops

Snowpack

Max Strotbeck · Mar 15, 2025 · Steamboat & Flat Tops

Weather

Overcast skies with temperatures around the mid-teens to low-twenties. Snowfall from the morning to early afternoon averaged about a centimeter per hour. Light west winds below ridgeline, but nearing ridgeline winds were moderate to strong and blowing snow.

Snowpack

I found 26-31cm of new snow that began falling early yesterday morning. There was not much weight to this new snow, and when skiing down an east aspect I easily penetrated through it to the thick, supportable crust beneath, which developed during the weeklong dry spell prior to yesterday. When taking skis off I also did not penetrate much through this crust with my boots. West winds were heavily drifting this snow to the point that isolated east aspects near ridgeline held nearly 3x the amount of new snow above the old surface. Turning the corner to the northeast on the ridgeline, I did not find much drifted snow at all. In extended column tests in wind-loaded and sheltered terrain on east aspects, I did not see propagating results within the new or old snow. On all aspects traveled today (NE-E-SE) I did not feel any cracking or collapsing. But on a northeast aspect, I did see propagation with moderate taps in an extended column test on a thin layer of faceted snow that was previously a crust and buried in early March (ECTP12 down 56cm). I’ve had trouble discerning this layer elsewhere in the Park Range, and its distribution seems to be spotty.