Steamboat & Flat Tops
AvalancheJason Konigsberg · Jan 28, 2023 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
Light snowfall during the day with short bursts of heavier snow. In the afternoon there was a brief break in the clouds. we didn't observe snow transport on the sheltered below treeline slopes we traveled until about 9k feet where lots of moving snow was observed. Height of storm snow is 18 to 24 inches.
Snowpack
The main goal for the day was to see if the lower density layer causing issues on Friday had settled out. It did not. The storm snow felt even more upside down than the previous day and we got easy extended column test results both on the early-storm layer and on top of a melt-freeze crust. In sheltered areas, shooting cracks were less prevalent than Friday, but it was easy to trigger small avalanches on any steep unsupported rock feature.
Avalanche
We observed more recent natural avalanches on southerly slopes, but we also didn't travel through a lot of northerly-facing terrain. The most widespread activity was on a southerly slope near the trailhead where almost every steep, unsupported rock feature had avalanches. Some avalanches propagated widely. A few small avalanches ran from very steep features the previous night, covering the summer trail.