Steamboat & Flat Tops
AvalancheMax Strotbeck · Feb 9, 2024 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
Skies were overcast with light winds from the southwest. It snowed nearly the entire time I was in the field, mostly at a rate of one centimeter an hour but with a short period of upwards of 3 centimeters an hour. Temperatures hovered around the high-teens/low-twenties.
Snowpack
The snowpack is deep in the Fish Creek Drainage, ranging from 150cm on a steeper southeast slope to 250cm on a north slope, both around 9,400 feet. The average depth while probing around today seemed to be a bit over 2 meters. The new snow that has been falling since Wednesday made up the top 30cm or so of the snowpack and was generally fist hard. The exception being on an open southwest facing slope I traversed that was wind pressed and showed sastrugi. Here ski penetration was about 10cm, while elsewhere it was closer to 15-20cm. Below this new snow I found decomposing fragments and graupel on west and north aspects, and a 4cm thick crust on a southeast aspect. Below this snow was 25-45cm of primarily 4-finger hard snow that fell from 2/2-2/4. Beneath this snow were the weak layers that developed in the latter part of January, a thinner layer of 6-8mm lying down surface hoar crystals (along with graupel and near surface facets) on west and north aspects observed, and thick melt-freeze crusts (up to 7cm) observed on southerly aspects. In snowpack instability tests conducted on west, north, and southeast slopes, the only failure I saw on these deeper weak layers was on the buried surface hoar on a north aspect, though there was no propagation (ECTN30 down 78cm). When I took my ski off to test boot penetration on the west and north facing slopes, I sank 70 to 80cm, all the way through to the harder snow beneath the snow from our two storms we've had in February. On the southeast slope, I only penetrated to the upper thick crust that formed, and when I skied on a steep south facing test slope, the snow sluffed easily on this crust and ran a ways down the slope.
Avalanche
I did not observe any avalanches.