Northern Madison

Photo: J Aid

My friend and I toured in Beehive this morning.  Was calm early but the winds picked up late morning and were whipping around pretty good as we left mid-afternoon.   Dug a quick pit at ~9300 ft along the upper east side of the west ridge of Beehive Basin (lower end in the timber before it gets exposed in the upper basin).  Snowpack was ~120cm deep, approximately half of that being from the last storm series.  We got an ECTP11 that was a smooth propagation which failed ~65 cm up from the ground at the interface of the new storm snow.  This reinforced the instability we expected to find and we stuck to a few laps of the smaller / gentler east facing meadows.  Skiing was great though!  With the wind today I’m sure the instability will only get worse before it gets better…

Middle Basin ECT

Middle Basin Snowpit

Tyler's snowpit