Steamboat & Flat Tops

Avalanche

Jason Konigsberg. Mike Cooperstein · Jan 10, 2025 · Steamboat & Flat Tops

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Weather

Thin clouds in the morning, to overcast around noon, to mostly clear by 2 PM. There wasn't any snow transport today.

Snowpack

The snowpack is quiet, with no obvious signs of instability observed. Observed natural avalanches are suspected to be around 7 to 10 days old. On slopes sheltered from the wind, the snowpack structure is consistent across different elevations and aspects. The difference is in the snow depth. The snowpack is deepest on northerly slopes at around 160 cm. This deeper snowpack on northerly-facing slopes is where the snowpack is the strongest. The exception is steep and rocky slopes with more variable snowpack depth. These steep and rocky slopes are where triggering an avalanche is most likely. On west and southwest-facing slopes, both below and near treeline, we found a snowpack depth of 115 to 130 cm. The snowpack structure was identical, with a thick, stout slab over four-finger hard faceted crystals about 45 cm from the ground. The snowpack is faceted under the layer of concern, but the facets are relatively stronger than the layer buried around December 9. We also dug on a south-facing slope at 10,000 feet. The snowpack was 100 cm deep, and interestingly, there were no weak layers of concern or crust facet combinations in the upper snowpack. There were 30 cm of frozen melt forms at the bottom of the pack, with a 70 cm right-side up snowpack on top. We only dug one on south, so we are not sure if this is representative. The northeast winds on Thursday changed the landscape on near treeline exposed slopes. Northerly slopes, which likely were holding soft snow previously, were left with a hard wind-etched surface. The most drastic change was on northeast-facing slopes. We traveled on a northwest-facing near treeline slope and found a thin, hard, wind-packed slab over weak faceted snow near the ground and a generally thinner snowpack.

Avalanche

Several old avalanches in the area on northwest through east.