Steamboat & Flat Tops
AvalancheMax Strotbeck, Jason Konigsberg · Jan 9, 2025 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
Overcast skies and light snow in the morning that turned to broken skies by mid-day. Temperatures were in the mid-teens at lower elevations and closer to single digits near the summit. Strong northeast winds near ridgeline made it feel much colder. The northeast winds stripped snow from north and northeast slopes, leaving hard surface snow on slopes with a previously softer upper snowpack. Moderate blowing snow in open terrain in the morning dissipated later in the day.
Snowpack
In wind-sheltered terrain, we found a very similar snowpack structure across the aspects and elevations we traveled (SW-N-SE between 9,000-10,600 feet). About 20cm of fist hard new snow above 50 to 70 centimeters of one-finger to pencil hard snow that fell primarily between 12/25 to 12/30. This thick, dense slab lies above our weak snow that developed during the December drought. This layer and the snow beneath is mostly faceted, but with all this weight now on top, the weak snow is compacting and becoming less weak. It is firmer on the hand hardness scale than just after the new year. With 80 to 90cm of snow above the December drought layer, it is becoming less sensitive to triggers. In the three extended column tests we performed in separate snow pits on northwest, northeast, and southeast aspects, we saw propagation with hard taps in the southeast pit on the December drought layer (ECTP28 @ 38cm). In the northeast-facing snow pit where we did not see propagation in an ECT, we did see propagation in two propagation saw tests when the saw was run through the December drought layer interface less than half of the length of the column (PST 35/100 END @ 47cm, PST 40/100 END @ 47cm).
Avalanche
We saw multiple avalanches below the ridgelines of Sand Mountain and Meaden Peak on North through northeast through east aspects. They appeared to be natural, mostly D1.5 to D2 on the destructive force scale, and small relative to path. It was hard to gauge when they may have run, but most appeared to have fairly intact edges, so likely towards the tail end of the late December storm cycle and possibly during the 1/4- 1/6 storm.