Middle Basin (Beehive Basin)

Hi! Looks like you guys have been fortunate enough to play in Cooke City a bit, yay! I went looking for snow up in Middle Basin today and found some nice sugary powder and some layers. We dug a pit on a NE aspect in Middle Basin around 9,500’ and got an ECT25 Q3 break. The snowpack is weak and sugary but the breaks we did manage to get did not propegate at all in stability tests. The snow is about 2.5’ deep, on this aspect where the snow was relatively undisturbed by wind there is 8-10” of dry powder on top of the first crust, which is thin enough to break through with a ski pole in a few places and thick and hard in others. The next crust layer is about 20” down from the top of the snowpack and is pretty thick and firm, about 3” thick. Sandwiched between the two crusts is a layer of dry sugary facets, and under the second layer it’s faceted snow all the way to the ground, increasing in granule size and cohesiveness as the snowpack gets deeper. We dug in a few places and every time we got rotten breaks - the snow just kind of mushed down into itself. It’s more cohesive on the south facing slopes, but thinner and more affected by wind and sun. The sugary surface snow is running in loose dry sluffs on steep slopes and I set off a small avalanche coming through a steep section, not a big slide but enough to knock you off your feet if you’re not paying attention. It broke about 1’ deep, 15’ wide, and ran probably 30’ before stopping as the slope lessened in steepness. This was on the NE aspect. Skiing back out to Beehive on a S facing slope, I got some more loose surface dry snow to sluff on a steep slope just by ski cutting it. All of the 10”-15” of surface snow slid right on the ground and ran about 100’. So all the snow that was there was sluffed out. Both slopes were around 45-48 degrees by my estimation. Like I said small loose dry sluffs in these particular areas. Hope you all are well! Cheers :)