Steamboat & Flat Tops

Snowpack

Dylan Craaybeek · Mar 12, 2022 · Steamboat & Flat Tops

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Weather

Cold morning with Scattered sky and a light breeze. Clouds cleared throughout the day and temperatures rose to above freezing with Calm winds. The temperature at West Elk trailhead by 4:00 PM was 41 F.

Snowpack

On northerly slopes a slab 50-70 cm thick rests on very weak (F-) facets with a melt-freeze crusts (MFcr) in the middle of the slab from the early March warm period. Snowpack tests showed unstable results all failing on the facet layer. Extended column tests were all getting propagating failures between 15-25 taps. The MFcr on southerly slopes is under around 20-40 cm of soft (F to 4F) snow and about 3-5cm thick. Several collapses were experienced while traveling on northerly slopes.