Steamboat & Flat Tops
SnowpackAustin DiVesta Drew Gibson · Nov 26, 2022 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
Warm and sunny to start the day then around 12:30pm clouds began to increase and temperature dropped. Light winds out of the west with no visible snow blowing.
Snowpack
We saw snow heights ranging from 20cm to 40cm below treeline. We noted a decent size surface hoar 2-3mm in the skin track. Probing along the skin track, we found a faceted snowpack with little structures and rain crust towards the bottom 10cm. We were able to break through the rain crust. At approximately 11,400ft, we dug on east and northeast-facing slopes along a ridgetop. Snow height varied in these two pits from 45cm to 65cm. Much of these pits consisted of crust facet combinations. Again, we found the rain crust around 15-20cm from the ground. Both of these pits did not produce propagation results with Extend Column Tests. These snow profiles provide a good snapshot of the snowpack. We also dug another snowpit on a wind-loaded terrain feature on a northeast slope at approximately the same elevation. In this snowpit, we found a snow height of 108cm, consisting of slabs ranging from 4 Finger to Pencil hardness. We did not see as many crusts within this area but noticed that rain crust in the bottom 15-20cm of the snowpack. An Extended Coloum Test produced a non-propagating result at 95cm or 13cm from the top of the snowpack. On the descent, we found the rain crust somewhat supportable on skins; we only broke through a handful of times on harder turns.