Steamboat & Flat Tops

Avalanche

CMC AIARE Lvl 1 · Feb 17, 2018 · Steamboat & Flat Tops

Weather

Sunny with temps near freezing most of the day. Snow surface remained cold but a thin 1cm crust began building just under the surface. Snow on tree limbs was shedding most of the day due to warm temps and some light wind gusts. Winds were in the light range most of the day at 9400ft, direction was not observed. However we did see intense wind transport out of the west on the Flat Tops as we drove down Rabbit Ears pass, despite the peaks being ~25 miles away from our location. Additional info from Seedhouse Rd in North Routt had moderate to intense wind transport on the higher peaks there as well.

Snowpack

HS= ~170cms with about 40-45cms of 4F hard basal facets at the bottom of the snowpack. Compression tests showed either stubborn results on some east facing terrain or no results at all on some east and north facing terrain. The stubborn (CTM & CTH) results were in the upper 30-40cms of the snowpack and were mostly breaks and irregular fractures within the recent storm snow. ECTs were ECTX (no propagation) New storm snow did react in the shovel tilt test with moderate force. We did not observe any failures on the basal facet interface in any of our formal tests. However shovel shears on unfailed columns would consistently have a failure at the basal facet interface.

Avalanche

None seen at our location