Steamboat & Flat Tops
SnowpackMax Strotbeck · Mar 12, 2025 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
Warm day on Parkview. Temperatures were near freezing at the trailhead in the morning and did not cool down as I gained elevation throughout the day. Clouds were scattered. There were light winds from the south and the winds were not drifting snow. No new snow.
Snowpack
The snow surfaces on aspects north through east through south consisted of wind-packed rounds, decomposing fragments or melt-forms. New snow from the incoming storm should bond better to these surfaces as opposed to a faceted surface. There was a 25-35cm slab of increasingly hard snow down to the late February/early March drought layer. On the ridgeline, this layer was hardened by wind and rounded, and further down from the ridge it was softer but also mostly rounded. I did not see a fracture on this layer in an extended column test in a snowpit on a northeast slope, and no propagation anywhere within the snow. Below this drought layer was a thick 1-finger to pencil hard slab. I did not dig below this, but from my trip here two-and-a-half weeks ago, I found the earlier season faceted snow had become more compact, and with even more weight on this snow these facets are compacting even more, making it harder to trigger a deep-breaking avalanche.