Steamboat & Flat Tops
AvalancheMax Strotbeck Jason Konigsberg · Dec 11, 2023 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
Toured from mid-morning to mid-afternoon. Skies were mostly overcast. Calm wind and temperature in the mid-20s. Intermittent snow at less than 1 cm an hour. Storm totals over the last 3 or 4 days are around 45 cm (18 in)
Snowpack
We toured from 9,400 to 10,500 feet and found a relatively deep snowpack (for this time of year and compared to other places in the state), ranging from 100 to 146cm on west through north through east aspects. The upper snowpack consisted of 45 cm of fist hard snow. This is from our most recent storm that began last Thursday. We also found what we think is a very thin rime crust on all aspects about 2 cm from the surface. It could be a crust from freezing rain, but it does not look like a melt-freeze crust. This rime crust is of no consequence to snowpack stability right now, but it is something to watch for in the future. On a steeper northeast aspect, we found surface hoar crystals up to 12 mm in size buried under the snow from our most recent storm (45 cm from the surface). We had propagating results on this layer with moderate taps during our extended column test (ECTP17). We did not find buried surface hoar in our other snowpits on west, northwest, and east-facing slopes. --- The mid-pack is a dense slab ranging from four-finger to pencil hardness on the Hand Hardness Scale. At the bottom of the snowpack, we found 2 to 4mm faceted grains. This basal layer ranged from 17 cm thick on east aspects to 33 cm thick on northerly aspects. While we were able to get propagating results on top of and within the basal facets in our extended column test on a northwest aspect (ECTP25 @ 32cm), this layer is becoming harder to effect, and we did not get propagating results on this layer on east and west aspects we tested.
Avalanche
We did not observe any avalanches.