Steamboat & Flat Tops
SnowpackKreston Rohrig, Dylan Craaybeek · Mar 8, 2025 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
Sunny day with a light breeze.
Snowpack
The snowpack deepened to around 170+cm at higher elevations but still showed poor structure. When we dug on a north-facing slope at the top of Burrow Mountain, there were two distinct reactive layers in the upper snowpack, and weak snow near the ground. One was a thin layer of near-surface facets sandwiched between the two storms last week. It took very little force to get a crack in this layer, but it didn't always cross the entire column in ECTs. A buried surface hoar underneath the Valentine's slab was the more concerning layer. This will likely be the first layer to fail and trigger an avalanche. The depth hoar at the bottom of the snowpack was also incredibly weak and propagated cracks with a bit more force. Many layers are problematic and reactive. If you find a steep slope, any one of these layers may fail and bring down an avalanche.