Steamboat & Flat Tops

Avalanche

Joe Messina · Mar 7, 2016 · Steamboat & Flat Tops

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Weather

Snow throughout the tour. Light winds out of the west. Temperature taken from Elk River SNOTEL. HS varied with elev and aspect, from about 90 to 155 cm.

Snowpack

On ENE around to S aspects, snow was completely moist below about 6 inches of new snow. A snowpit dug on a lower elevation NNE aspect only had moist snow in basal facets... the bottom 30 cm of snow. Thinking maybe yesterday's valley rain made it up to 9,000 ft? Cloud cover certainly prevented radiative cooling and kept snow surface warm before today's snow started falling.

Avalanche

I was able to trigger some small Storm Slab avalanches on ENE and E aspects below treeline. They ran in about 6 inches of new snow on top of old melt-freeze snow that was not frozen.