Steamboat & Flat Tops

Cold and mostly sunny. Slight uptick in winds towards afternoon.

We observed 5 to 6 inches of new snow. The new snow was low-density and was not forming a slab. We traveled at ridgetop around 10,500 feet and didn't find any evidence of drifting. The new snow was becoming slightly moist on southerly-facing slopes. About 6 to 8 inches from the surface is a well-defined layer of surface hoar. We found this in most snowpits on north through east-facing slopes. We also sometimes found the surface hoar on top of a crust on southeast-facing slopes. Lower in the snowpack are weak layers adjacent to crusts. We got one hard propagating result in an ECT on the crust/facet combo from Christmas on an east-facing slopes. We did not observe any other signs that these lower-snowpack layers are reactive.