Steamboat & Flat Tops
SnowpackMax Strotbeck · Mar 6, 2024 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
Very light snowfall in morning opening up to broken skies. Moderate southwest winds and mild temperatures.
Snowpack
I found the average height of snow to range from about 140cm-200cm. The new snow that fell beginning the evening of March 2nd makes up about 20% of this depth. This most recent storm brought with it a widespread dust layer that was likely deposited on March 3rd (based on it's depth and in relation to the layer that formed over the 2/28-3/2 dry period). Beneath this new snow I found crusts on east and south aspects. In a snowpit dug on a windloaded east facing slope, I did not observe facets above or beneath this crust, and it was unreactive in an extended column test. In two snowpits dug on north-northeast facing slopes in different areas, extended column tests failed on hard taps a few centimeters beneath the dust layer (on the layer that formed over the 2/28-3/2 dry period), but did not propagate. Closely inspecting this layer it was difficult to discern exactly what was the failure plane, but possibly a very thin layer of near-surface facets. Overall, in the snowpack I observed I did not find well-defined persistent weak layers in the upper 120cm on north and east aspects. I experienced only minor cracking today near ridgeline where wind had deposited snow into a thin (less than 10cm) cohesive slab.