Steamboat & Flat Tops
SnowpackDan Edmiston ยท Mar 16, 2014
Weather
Brisk start at TH, -13*C with calm winds. Clear skies with a light breeze at ridgeline. Wind was still moving a little bit of the new snow around.
Snowpack
140cm on NNE facing slope. Steeper temp gradient (Just a bit above 1*C per 10cm) in the upper half of the snow pack with a little bit of facetting on a few upper layers. Sun or melt/freeze crust about 10-15cms down that new snow had a little trouble bonding too. Was easy to break thru the crust on an easy ski cut. Lower layers had a weak temp gradient (1 degree C for the last 70cm) and the depth hoar was showing signs of rounding and was easily compressed into a snowball. Did not find any windslabs on our tour but the drive up showed abundant evidence of the winds from Saturday. Cold snow remained pretty well preserved on north facing slopes. south facing slopes had either very little snow or were completely melted out. Sun and/or melt freeze crusts were abundant on all but due north terrain. Compression test resulted in CTH22 @31cm with an RP fracture, which was 20cms below the crust and within a small facetted round layer. Surface hoar layer down 76cms was visible, but decomposing and was not reactive at all.