Steamboat & Flat Tops
SnowpackCody Perry · Dec 29, 2011 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
Overcast. Light winds out of the west. temps between 20-28 degrees from morning to early afternoon.
Snowpack
There are so many values and variations it is very difficult to give a comprehensive view of the "snowpack". On 12/26 a crew was inspecting "bowlers" ski run in the Hahn's Peak Lake area. "Bowlers" is a North facing shot with tree protection on each side and a steep drop in (39 degrees) Snow depth varied between 40cm & 89cm through out the run but the top half was completely unconsolidated grains. Point release's dominated this experience and flowed down the run like water. We started to notice many of these small natural collapses on different aspects and elevations that day. Yesterday 12/28, our tour up Iron Mountain showed snow depths between 38cm (basin trees) and 122cm (ridge loaded). Highly variable surface conditions with 3 distinct layers on the solar aspects. Again their depths varied but the upper 2 were in close proximity to each other and the third being halfway in the pack (I suspect this will be the bed surface for upcoming cycles) I'm sketched about this pack right now and don't trust rhyme or reason about it. I haven't run across any whumping but plenty of shooting cracks on solar surface crusts. Lots of sluffing with very little propagation (sluff depth was between 20 to 50cm!! can weigh a lot). Sorry for so little info to submit, its just we don't have much to safely ski up here right now. And even so, hope the new year has a resolution in mind to start snowking..