Steamboat & Flat Tops
AvalancheCody Perry · Dec 29, 2018 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
FREEZING! Very light am valley fog, like crystalized air. Otherwise clear sky's becoming partly covered in the early afternoon. Calm winds all day out of the southwest.
Snowpack
The south and facing snow in the area is highly variable in composition and any decent wind swells seemed weak and hollow. West facing snow was also variable but we didn't spend too much time on those sides. The only shooting cracks and minor collapsing we observed were on these aspects. East and North snow is soft with boot top ski pen. We dug into a 95cm snowpack on a 30 degree East facing slope at 9200ft. The snow surface was covered in large and small facets and other mixed forms of blown snow and decomposing grains. Surface snow was -10C, with a -5C degree reading 20cm below the snow surface. The persistent slab we found lingering in the snow 30 to 40cm below the surface. A robust and stiff crust of welded facets with poorly consolidated sugar like snow below that- to the ground. Unlike other recent reports, we couldn't get any results from ECT's ECX (x2). We had different results with CT tests- a CTM PC on the buried old persistent slab crust mentioned above, and another CTM irregular break down in the facets below the same buried crust.
Avalanche
None observed. No signs of naturals or human triggered slides.