Beehive/Bear Obs.

We took our level 1 course up to the ridge between Beehive and Bear Basin. Skies oscillated between overcast and broken as light snow fell throughout the day with little to no accumulation. Winds were generally light, and no snow was being actively transported.

We descended a low angle east aspect down to about 8500' and found quality surface conditions and fun turns.  This week's snow comprised the upper 35 cm of the snowpack, was right side up, and generally well-bonded to the new/old interface below. Hand shears, up-track tests, and small test slopes were non-reactive.  We avoided any sustained slopes over 30 degrees and we saw no obvious signs of instability during our tour.

We dug two quick pits and performed an ECT in each. We found very similar poor structure in both pits and both ECT's propagated across the column within a layer of soft facets about 18" below the surface.

East aspect @ 8500', 28 degree slope

HS 90 - ECTP24 @ 44 cm 

90-55  F>4F>1F - This week's snow

55-50 - P - Rounded Grains -  January snow

50-35 - F - Facets

35-33 - 4F - Decomposing Crust/Facets

33-20 - F - Facets

20-Gnd - 1F - DH/Facets

East aspect @ 9100', 12 degree slope

HS 88 - ECTP11 @ 43 cm within a layer of fist-hard facets

Very similar structure to above, except for a 2 cm pencil hard MFcr at the interface below this week's snow capping a few cm of pencil hard rounds from January.

Fist-hard facet layer began at 47 cm and transitioned to 4F DH at 20 cm, with large and striated crystals visible to the naked eye.