Steamboat & Flat Tops
AvalancheMax Strotbeck · Mar 29, 2025 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
A mix of overcast, obscured and broken skies today, with less than 1cm accumulation of new snow falling as graupel near treeline, while little to no snow fell at lower elevations. Temperatures were warm, near to above freezing all day. Calm to light northwest winds including on the ridge near treeline.
Snowpack
There was 8-11cm of dense new snow that fell overnight into this morning. Below treeline, the old snow surface barely froze, and when I traveled off the beaten-in skin track I regularly sunk through this weak crust up to 40cm deep into moistened snow. Here the snowpack ranged from 50-115cm, much of which was moist. I dug a quick snowpit where the height of snow was 80cm and the entire snowpack was moist. I could make a snowball with the basal facets. Nearing treeline the old surface crust was firm, thick, and supportable to skis. Whether due to the density of the snow or lack of wind, or both, I didn’t find much new wind-drifted snow near treeline (less than a 1cm wind skin on northeast and east aspects). I tried breaking off a wind slab on a steep test slope, and while the new snow slid off the firm crust beneath, it was not very cohesive and did not propagate across more than a couple feet. In snowpits dug on ESE and NE aspects around 11,200ft, I found the snowpack had become moist down to and a bit beneath the weak layer that developed in early March, now buried about 35-45cm deep. This layer appeared fairly rounded in the northeast pit and was a moist to wet thick crust in the east-southeast pit. Extended column tests did not show propagation on this layer, and did not produce propagation elsewhere in these snowpits.
Avalanche
I saw recent, very small loose-wet avalanches on a NE facing slope NTL in the distance