Steamboat & Flat Tops

No avalanches observed

Cold morning quickly warming up by about 10:00. with mostly clear sky and some clouds rolling through in the afternoon with a very brief period of S-1 for about 10 minutes on our way back to the trailhead around 14:00.

Still a shallow snowpack and at times scary to be riding off the trail. The average height of snow (HS) was around 60-80cm on flat and north-facing slopes and about 20-40cm on south-facing slopes. There is really just three main layers, new snow since January making up the top 2/3 of the snowpack, a thick rain crust (IFrc) from Christmas (the Grinch Crust), and weak facets and depth hoar below the rain crust down the ground. Extended column tests showed propagating failures after moderate taps below the 2cm thick IFrc but there were no signs of instability such as cracking or collapsing on numerous test slopes. The top 10cm of the new snow is rapidly faceting with the last couple of days of dramatic diurnal temperature swings, with small near-surface facets (.3mm FCsf) clearly visible on all slopes we traveled on. Very little evidence of wind-transported snow and no evidence of buried surface hoar anywhere we dug.