Steamboat & Flat Tops
SnowpackMax Strotbeck · Feb 10, 2025 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
Cold morning in the single digits that warmed to near twenty. Clear skies and light to moderate southwest and west winds. No new snow, and no blowing snow observed.
Snowpack
I found a shallow snowpack, ranging from 80-115cm on the east and southeast slopes I probed around. The top 10-25cm was new snow from the weekend storm (and on southeast aspects the surface was a thin breakable crust that made for very uncomfortable skiing). Beneath this was a crust that developed during the few days of spring we had to start the month of February. This crust was slick and supportable to skis. On southeast slopes, this crust was firm and 3cm thick. I needed two hands just to push the backside of my pole through it. On east aspects, this crust was a little more forgiving, thinner, and faceting. On both aspects, I found faceted snow directly beneath this crust, and saw failures in extended column tests here, but not propagation. Much of the mid-pack slab was faceted but rounding, and relatively soft on the hand-hardness scale (four-finger hard). At the ground the snow was four-finger to fist hard on east aspects, and a near pencil-hard crust on southeast aspects.