Steamboat & Flat Tops

Snowpack

Jason Konigsberg · Dec 26, 2018 · Steamboat & Flat Tops

Weather

We traveled in sheltered terrain but the wind was cranking in adjacent terrain. I would expect drifted slabs of snow on exposed northerly slopes. Skies were broken on the east side of the pass but on the drive west the top of the pass was socked in and snow was around a half inch per hour. The height of snow on Baker Mountain was pretty consistent at around 1 to 1.2 meters on east and northeast-facing slopes.

Snowpack

The most concerning layer is a surface hoar layer buried 30 to 40 cm from the surface. It is more concerning than the stronger and more deeply buried faceted layers but overall it isn't very worrying. The surface hoar layer is broken and tilted over. It is easily visible in snowpits but not very reactive in tests. On an east-facing slope we got a propagating result in an extended column test (ECTP15). The surface hoar was under a paper thin crust in this particular pit.--- No collapsing, cracking or other signs of instability. I tried pushing some snow and ski cutting some steeper wind-drifted terrain features near ridgetop and the only result was small sluffs.---I would use caution around any northerly slope that is currently wind loading but overall snowpack stability (from my small area of observation) is good.---Large loading events could make either the upper snowpack weak layers or basal layers more reactive but that does not seem to be in the cards for the next few days.