Steamboat & Flat Tops
AvalancheAustin DiVesta · Jan 18, 2024 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
A warm blustery winter day with a little bit of snow and graupel.
Snowpack
I spent much of the day looking at the snowpack, whether that was on purpose or not. Anytime we stepped off our sleds, we sank in about 55-65 cm of new snow. We chose to dig a snow pit on a north-facing slope slightly sheltered from the wind, even though there had been a decent amount of drifting for the past week. The snow height here was 220-240 cm. The upper snowpack was made up entirely of the recent week-long storm snow. I did get a propagating Extended Column Test down about 20 cm twice (ECTP4 at 200cm); from what I could tell, it looked like a small density change within the new snow. The only places I saw signs of a persistent grain were around trees.
Avalanche
Avalanche was previously coded here: https://avalanche.state.co.us/observations/field-report/f26a135f-7a4b-4228-99a8-c6c642c16a3f