Steamboat & Flat Tops
AvalancheMax Strotbeck · Jan 26, 2024 · Steamboat & Flat Tops
Weather
Overcast skies with calm to light winds from the west. Temps hovered around the mid-twenties. Snowed for the duration of my time in the field from S-1 to S2.
Snowpack
I spent the day touring at low elevations (<8,600ft) on Buffalo Pass on Northwest through West through South aspects. I found the height of snow to range from 87cm on steeper southerly aspects to 130cm in open flat meadows. Splitting the snowpack in two (pre-and-post Jan. 4), the upper snowpack was about 2-2.5ft thick where I dug snowpits. The slab was fist hard near the surface and progressively got firmer to 1 finger or pencil hard towards the lower end of the slab, with the one exception being a 3cm thick pencil hard melt-freeze crust that was present near the surface in a pit dug on a southerly aspect. Below this slab, the lower snowpack was mostly faceted, or a combination of facets and crusts on southerly aspects. On a Northwest aspect, I observed a layer of buried surface hoar at the interface of the lower and upper snowpack. While I didn't experience any collapses or cracking while traversing the terrain, the snowpack tests showed triggering avalanches in this terrain is still possible. The extended column tests I conducted on West and South-southwest aspects produced propagating results on hard taps on the Christmas to Jan. 4 drought layer. I did not get propagating results in a pit on a Northwest aspect. When I dragged my saw through this layer for propagation saw tests, the results showed propensity to propagate, as the fractures propagated to the end of the columns with cut lengths between 37-45cm in all three tests (on NW, W, and SSW aspects).
Avalanche
I did not observe any avalanches.