Steamboat & Flat Tops

Snowpack

Anonymous ยท Dec 22, 2010

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Weather

Partly cloudy with good visibility and no wind. Temps hovering around the freezing line.

Snowpack

Dug a pit on NNE aspect @ 10,000ft. Total snowpack depth: 220cm. Snowpack consisted of nearly a meter of consolidated new snow, the December 12 crust buried a meter deep, and several deeply buried surface hoar layers sandwiched between consolidated snow. Compression tests reacted to the Dec 12 with moderate clean shears @ 110cm from surface, as well hard clean shears @160cm and @180cm from surface on old buried surface hoar layers. Our Extended Column Test (ECT) yielded no results. We had good visibility and saw no signs of recent avalanche activity other than a couple of recent small snowcat-triggered sluffs from earlier in the day on South facing slopes. No cracking or collapsing was observed.