Steamboat & Flat Tops

Overcast skies and snowing the majority of my tour, at a rate that averaged about a centimeter an hour. Light south winds with temperatures in the upper-twenties.

There was about 10cm of storm snow that had accumulated by the time I exited the field around 1:30pm. This snow was fist-hard but cohesive, and had there been more would have made for a proper slab. The new snow seemed to also bond well to the old surface (a thick melt-freeze crust on south and southeast, and a thinner and weaker crust on east) as I could not get it to “budge” on steep test slopes. About 30cm from the surface a persistent weak layer of faceted snow exists that developed prior to the MLK holiday weekend. This layer is showing signs of rounding, and in only one extended column test did I see a fracture at this layer (in a snowpit dug on a southeast slope where these facets were beneath a crust). However, the structure is still concerning, and an avalanche could step down to this layer.