Steamboat & Flat Tops
SnowpackMax Strotbeck · Jan 30, 2025 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
Clear skies and light northeast winds. Temperatures were in the single digits in the morning at the trailhead and warmed to the mid-twenties by afternoon. No new snow.
Snowpack
Height of snow on east and southeast aspects ranged from 140-180cm. I found the mid-January weak layer buried about 30cm down, with the slab above it quickly increasing in hardness from fist hard near the surface to one-finger hard just above this layer. The weak layer was about 1cm thick, and in snow pits dug on ENE, E, and SE aspects, was composed of rounding facets, a faceting crust, and a melt-freeze crust (with a very thin layer of facets on either side) respectively. Below this layer was 45-50cm of one-finger hard snow, and 20cm of pencil hard snow below that. In extended column tests in these snow pits, fractures initiated on the mid-January layer with moderate taps on the ENE aspect (ECTN14) and with hard taps on the SE aspect (ECTN22). On a due east aspect, propagation occurred on this layer, but only after an additional loading step (ECTN15).