Steamboat & Flat Tops
AvalancheKreston Rohrig, Mike Floyd · Feb 26, 2021 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
It was a chilly day up on the pass with overcast skies and a fairly consistent west wind. There were a few light flurries, but little to no accumulation throughout the day.
Snowpack
As expected, the snowpack in this part of the zone is deeper than most areas, but still falls short of historic averages. On a southeast-facing slope near Soda Mt, we found depths in the 160-200+cm range with a few buried crust/facet layers mixed about. For the most part, these layers were well bonded and the slabs above and below were 1 finger to pencil hard. The most recent crust around 4cm down was reactive in tests, but isolated on aspect and terrain. We also dug on a north-facing slope and found even better stability with a thick slab and well bonded old layers of buried surface hoar deep in the snowpack. The basal facets and depth hoar in these deeper north aspects is still soft (4 finger), but well insulated by dense slabs well over a meter thick. We had no propagation in ECTs in this area.
Avalanche
None observed.