Steamboat & Flat Tops
AvalancheJason Konigsberg · Dec 18, 2021 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
Beautiful bluebird day with not a hint of wind.
Snowpack
About 10 to 12 inches of recent snow on Rabbit Ears. This is probably from Wednesday through Friday. The ski area is reporting 16 inches during this same period. The new snow was not wind affected anywhere I traveled and I observed no instabilities within the new snow.---I got a couple small collapses on west-facing slope and a couple booming collapses on an east-facing and southeast-facing slope. In snowpits on east and southeast the culprit layer was from 65 to 85 cm from the surface. This layer was small facets sitting on a very hard melt-freeze crust. There was some broken surface hoar intermixed in the faceted crystals. I got hard propagating results in extended column test on this layer. The slab on top of the facets is thick and quite stout, up to one-finger hard. Any avalanche on this layer could propagate very widely as the structure was consistent on both east and southeast slopes. I dug briefly on a north-facing slopes and found a deeper, but generally weaker snowpack. The facets, buried about 70 cm deep, were larger, though they do show signs of rounding. Compared to other zones I have traveled the faceted crystals are not very sharp and much smaller in size. I did not get any propagating results in this snowpit.
Avalanche
None observed