Beehive Lake

Today's warm-up was more impactful to surface softening than Thursday. We observed several Wet Slab avalanches fail on smooth, slick bedrock slopes. Be mindful where these types of slopes exists as they may be more prone to shedding the winter snowpack than slopes with more traditional ground cover as we progress further into spring. 

Once again, the snowpack was locked up nicely in the morning, and held tough for most of the day. Boot penetration was minimal to start, and only increased to 3 or 4 inches by mid-afternoon on easterly and southerly aspects. Despite only shallow softening, we were able to sheet the top inch or two down a steeper southeast-facing slope around 2 pm. This shallow, slow-moving surface layer did not gouge deeper or grow very wide, but it did travel almost 800 feet downhill to the toe of the slope. Random pole probing throughout our travels above 5,000 feet, we found a mostly refrozen and consolidated near-surface snowpack down to a robust layer about 45 cm deep. There are very subtle weaker layers within this depth, but nothing that felt too concerning. During the spring, the best method to determine if conditions are too soft is stepping off your boards and seeing how deep you sink. Northerly-facing slopes at mid and lower elevations had a skiff of fresh snow from Wednesday's storm, and deeper drifts were mostly isolated pockets near ridges and in gullies. Descending all the way down to 4,400 feet in the afternoon, we found mostly supportive conditions and did not push any wet snow sluffs downhill. Slopes with more underlying vegetation felt more trap-door, but still not too concerning today.