Beehive/Bear Basin

There was 1-2" of new graupel snow this morning which wasn't enough to hide signs of recent ferocious winds. Many slopes had been scoured down to old tracks and surfaces were a mix of thin crusts, soft snow and harder drifts/old snow. Along the ridge there was a dirt layer below today's snow. The graupel rolled off steep firm surfaces exposing the dirt or old crusts. Hard slabs along the ridge were stubborn under skis, but one collapsed and whumphed with a boot kick.

Wind today was strong and blowing snow, but not creating any fresh hazardous drifts. Snowfall picked up again around 1-2pm and was snowing steadily with moderate winds mid-afternoon, so I expect there could be some more significant wind slabs tomorrow.

In a snowpit at 9,200', ESE aspect, a layer of surface hoar from mid-February, buried 1.5-2 feet deep, produced ECTP24 x2. The January facets, 2-3 feet deep, broke at ECTN27 and ECTP27. In PSTs both layers propagated to end with cut lengths around 30-35% of the column length (SH: PST 35/100end, PST32/120 end; Jan Facets: PST 40/110end).

I heard a "whumph" and saw a crack about 10' wide when I kicked into a hard slab while climbing onto the ridgeline on the east side. Many hard slabs along the ridge were impenetrable to skis, but my boot kick caused this one to collapse. 8" hard slab on top of weak/soft snow below.