Steamboat & Flat Tops
AvalancheKreston Rohrig · Apr 8, 2021 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
Warm and sunny with a fresh breeze. A few scattered cotton ball clouds scattered throughout the sky. The truck temp gauge hit 51F at the top of Rabbit Ears Pass!
Snowpack
The sun was doing it's thing to warm slopes, but thankfully, a decent breeze helped keep snow surfaces in check. Sadly, the dust storm associated with last months upslope event is very evident and many surfaces still holding snow have a nasty brown hue. I dug on a north and south aspect just over 10k for comparison and found similar layering and affects from recent warm weather. The snowpack is super consolidated and moist to the ground. Recent melt water has refrozen into striated ice layers in the upper 20-30cm of the snowpack on either aspect. These were still frozen today, despite the heat. Today's warm temps and sun had only penetrated and wetted the upper 5cm on southerlies, and only a couple cm on north below treeline. For the most part this portion of the zone is going through a strong spring transition, and wet avalanche concerns were minimal to non-existent.
Avalanche
None observed