Steamboat & Flat Tops

Snowpack

Cody Perry · Jan 17, 2012 · Steamboat & Flat Tops

Weather

Clear open sky's. Very cold temps. Moderate winds and occasional gusts out of the S-SW.

Snowpack

HS 66cm. 18 to 25cm of new storm snow. HST snow is all mixed and broken forms averaging .5mm in grain size. Side and top loading have resulted in highly sensitive wind slab development in exposed areas. Skier trigger was happening below this new/old snow interface in the facets. behaving as a point release propagation happened only below slowly spreading outward. Many areas of stiff windloading had shooting cracks and constant whomphing. Southern aspects still have a very shallow snowpack between 1 & 25cm. With the North showing between a 50 to 120cm difference. Many southern aspects now have a new base layer of snow composed of the most recent storm snow. The East and West aspect have striped and loaded top sections respectively. With a weak base layer of what behaves like weak sand sliding down the slope if influenced the right way. What a year.