Steamboat & Flat Tops
SnowpackAustin DiVesta · Dec 25, 2023 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
A cold, windy day.
Snowpack
The holiday storm brought a welcome refresher to Rabbit Ears Pass. About eight to twelve inches of low-density snow. This was just enough to cover the old tracks. A decent amount of wind-transported snow was moving around the open meadows, but almost no wind was felt within the trees. We found a north-facing slope to dig a snow pit on around 10,500ft. Our snow height was 120 cm, with 25 cm of new snow. This snow rested on top of a very small melt-freeze crust, which formed last week sometime while the temperatures were in the 40s at the pass. While this is something to note on this north-facing slope, it had started to break down with the cold temperatures again. The mid-pack varied from 4-Finger to 1-Finger hard slab, almost 60 cm thick. This slab rested on 35 cm of weak, faceted snow that fell in November. Our Extended Column Tests produced hard results (ECTP25 @23cm and ECTP33 @23cm). We repeated the test after we originally got no propagation within the standard tests but added a could of extra taps from the shoulder, and we got full propagation within the basal weak layer.