Steamboat & Flat Tops
SnowpackAustin DiVesta · Dec 30, 2024 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
A blustery day on Rabbit Ears Pass. The parking lot had about two feet of snow in it from the storm when we arrived. Overall, temperatures weren’t too bad. It was snowing throughout the day in varying degrees of intensity. Looked like we picked up an additional three to four inches throughout the day.
Snowpack
The snowpack I found around Rabbit Ears was weak, no matter how you look at it The storm produced about a foot to two feet of new snow, which fell on top of faceted snow from earlier in the year, While snow depths were over a meter in most places I probed and dug today You can trench your sled into these layers In my sheltered pit with a snow height of 140cm, I didn’t find a slab resting on the weak snow at the ground, but we did get propagation on an Extended Column Test at the ground, ECTP 29 at the ground However, in my second pit I found a slightly shallower spot at 120cm and with a bit of a denser slab The ECT on this pit broke from taps from the elbow and propagated (ECTP15 at 45cm) underneath a melt-freeze crust, which formed pre-Thanksgiving.