Quick report
Today, we toured in Beehive. It did not refreeze over night and the temperatures were in the high 40s when we started.
The wind was blowing moderately out of the west. Cloud cover increased throughout the day.
The snow conditions were questionable: the snow was very mushy and we had to watch out for sink holes in the wet snow. While breaking trail we would sink in about a foot at times into saturated wet snow.
On the east side towards Bear Basin, a dark dirt layer is covering large areas which accelerates the melt process.
Our test results in our pit showed no propagation, but we could initate a crack on the buried surface hoar layer and the persistent weak layer of the near surface facets formed in February (ECTN12, ECTN14, ECTN16).
We tested those layers also with a Propagation Saw Test (PST), but didn't get any unstable results on this test (PST120/120(X), PST118/120(End)).
The upper part of the snow pit was wet, while the lower part still seemed to be more dry/moist.
We observed wet loose avalanche activity on all aspects (see avalanche summary).
Avalanche
- Size
- D1.5 R1
- Type
- WL
- Aspect
- W
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 9100 ft
Looker's left of the Prayer Flags, we observed two D1.5 wet loose avalanches naturally triggered probably some time yesterday. We also observed from the distance a few large (D2) wet loose avalanches on the east and north east face of Fan Mountain. In steep terrain in Bear Basin point releases of small, natural wet loose avalanches were visible on all aspects.