Steamboat & Flat Tops
SnowpackJason Konigsberg · Dec 1, 2016 · Front Range
Weather
Skies started partly cloudy at around 9 AM. Any clearing was short lived as clouds moved in quickly to obscure the sky. No evidence of any wind loading, current or previous, in this area.
Snowpack
Digging on several aspects yielded a very similar snowpack. About 2 feet of recent storm snow makes up the top two-thirds of the snowpack. This recent storm snow get progressively harder with depth from fist hardness near the surface to one-finger hardness at 15cms from the ground. The bottom 15cms of the snowpack is made up of small, four-finger hardness facets... This is a very similar snowpack as observed yesterday in the Buffalo Pass areas minus the surface hoar layer. No surface hoar layer was found buried intact in any pits dug today...The basal layer of small facets produced varying results in snowpack tests. The most exciting result was not very exciting at an ECTP23. The fracture character was resistant planar as it was smooth, but the block did not slide easily. The bottom line is the snowpack structure is fair. There is a weak layer to monitor but it is not very weak. It would be hard to trigger an avalanche on this layer, but not impossible.