Steamboat & Flat Tops

Broken skies turning scattered with temperatures in the mid-twenties to near-freezing. Moderate northwest winds with little snow transport. No new snow.

The height of snow was around 45-75cm on the lower slopes of Farwell prior to climbing the southwest ridge. As I got to the near-treeline area of Farwell (which is only around 10,000 feet) and traversed to north facing slopes, the height of snow increased to 110-130cm. I found about 14-19cm of very low-hardness snow on west-northwest and north aspects atop weak snow (surface hoar and near-surface facets) buried in mid-January. In an extended column test on a north aspect, I saw propagation on this weak snow after 7 taps from the wrist (ECTP 7). I did not see any results deeper than this, and did not see a structure that would indicate an avalanche would initially fail deeper than this near-surface weak layer. When I traversed over to an isolated, rocky southeast wind-loaded slope (where the height of snow was over 200cm in spots that I probed), I felt a minor collapse under my feet. It was hard to determine where the mid-January weak layer was here, but what I found most concerning was a 2cm melt-freeze crust buried 50cm down. I saw propagation on this layer in an ECT with 13 taps. However, when I walked 15 feet to the left, the height of snow was 50cm less, this result was not repeatable in a second ECT.