Steamboat & Flat Tops

Snowing lightly in the morning with decreasing clouds through the day. Not much wind in the below treeline area I traveled. Recent storm was about 30 cm or 12 in.

The snowpack depth on northerly-facing slopes is 110 to 140 cm deep. A thick slab, 60 to 80 cm thick, and composed of soft new snow, to one-finger hard settled snow from previous storms, sits on a thin but hard rain crust. As mentioned above, I found a layer of surface hoar within this slab, but it wasn't concerning. Beneath the rain crust is well developed facets. It was hard to impact this layer in tests because the crust is very hard. There is another thicker crust beneath the faceted layer. On due north slopes I found faceted snow or depth hoar at the ground, but it wasn't overly weak.