Steamboat & Flat Tops

Scattered skies turning broken by afternoon. Light west winds became moderate by afternoon, though I did not observe any blowing snow. Temperatures in the low-twenties. No new snow.

On northwest through north through east aspects observed around 10,000 feet, I found the height of snow to be 110-130cm. On the surface was the few centimeters of new snow that fell on the 16th and 17th. Just beneath that, 2-5cm down, I found surface hoar crystals up to 1cm in size, though smaller on northwest aspects. 25-30cm down from the surface I found another layer of surface hoar, or facets, that was on average a bit smaller and rounding than what I found closer to the surface. From the surface to this lower layer of surface hoar the snow was fist hard, though not as weak and faceted as I was expecting. The snow became progressively harder with increasing depth on the hand-hardness scale to the December crust/ice layers buried about 70-100cm deep. In multiple extended column tests, I saw fractures with moderate taps on this lower layer of buried surface hoar and fractures with hard taps 40-50cm down on small facets, but no propagation.