Steamboat & Flat Tops

Snowpack

Cody M Perry · Nov 19, 2012 · Steamboat & Flat Tops

Weather

Warm, wet wind. Light winds out of the SW with intermittent light precip. new snow was irregular flakes with a lot of rime on them.

Snowpack

There isn't much snow out there below 9000ft right now. However The terrain above this band has about a 40cm snowpack. I dug a bucket sized hole on an east aspect with nearly no slope angel. The structure shows mostly rounding facets. 2mm to 3mm grain size on the low side of the hole getting progressively smaller toward the top. There's also a bit of mixed grain form in the top quarter of the pack. Decomposing dendrites, grapple & rimed flakes. We also went for a short hike up on Rabbit ears earlier this weekend. the 10,000ft elevation band shows similar snowpack characteristics, but a wider variation in pack depth via aspect, wind protection, trees, etc. Also, surface hoar was visible formed from the previous night.