Steamboat & Flat Tops

Snowpack

Jason Konigsberg · Jan 22, 2018 · Steamboat & Flat Tops

Weather

Cold day with some valley fog and some clouds sitting around the higher peaks. As the day warmed the fog lifted and skies became mostly clear. Higher clouds from the approaching storm moved in late afternoon. Windy at ridgetop but we did not observe and snow being transported.---About 6 to 8 inches of new snow from Sunday's storm.

Snowpack

Third consecutive day of traveling in the backcountry in the zone and no old or new avalanches observed.---No storm slab instabilities observed.--- Today we did experience significant collapsing below treeline on west to north-facing slopes. The collapsing was due to a thin rain crust buried about 30 cms down. There is extremely weak, faceted snow below this crust. ECTP8 results were repeatable on a northwest-facing slope at 8800 ft. Avalanches are possible BTL but do to the soft nature of the slab, they will likely be on the small side. Future loading could make BTL very dangerous.---Near treeline the snowpack was deeper and stronger. There still is a weak layer of faceted snow 40 cms up from the ground (HS=120cms) but propagating ECT results were hard to non existent. The above-mentioned rain crust was not found above 9500 ft.---There is very little cornice formation on the larger east-facing slide paths (10,500 ft) in this area and it looks like recent northeast winds blew upslope of some exposed start zones resulting in uneven new slab distribution. A steep near treeline north-facing slopes still had many rocks showing with areas of hard slab in between.