Steamboat & Flat Tops
SnowpackJason Konigsberg · Apr 1, 2022 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
Winds were mostly light even on the exposed peak. New snow from last night was about 2 inches. Snow from the past two storms is about 5 inches. This snow is melted down on all sunny aspects.
Snowpack
The snowpack was supportable to skis all day. Like I found on Rabbit Ears Pass on Thursday, old wet slab problems are done for now with thick crusts in the upper snowpack on east through south to west-facing slopes. There is wet snow below this thick crust but it doesn't seem to be an issue. On northwest and northeast-facing slopes, there is a 2 inch thick supportable crust beneath this weeks snow with less wet snow beneath. The mid-February faceted layer is moist and yet I still got moderate propagating failures on this layer. For the most part, it would be very hard to affect this layer beneath thick crusts. Due north-facing slopes are a different story. Stability tests show a that the mid-Feb facet layer can still propagate a crack. There are no thick crusts to lessen the chance of impacting this layer, though the overlying slab is quite dense. The snowpack is still very winterlike and the faceted layer is still quite weak. The layer is as soft as fist hard on the hand-hardness scale.---I looked into the east chute of Hahns Peak and saw no signs of recent avalanches. There also wasn't any wind loading. It looked like there was a fairly recent loose wet avalanche in the chute. There was some evidence of wind-loading where the ridge wrapped around to southeast-facing but I did not observed signs of instability in the wind-drifted snow. The snow was warming today, so wind slabs are unlikely to be an issue tomorrow.---There isn't much snow to get wet in this area tomorrow. Most sunny slopes are baked down to just a crust. Could be a different story further south where there 5 inches on snow last night.