24-25

It was still snowing heavily when we arrived at the Beehive Basin trailhead this morning. We noted about 12-18" of new snow and winds blowing from the NE. It only took 20 minutes of skinning before we triggered a small avalanche in a terrain trap from a flat bench above. This slide (R3 D1) broke 150' wide, about a foot deep, and filled the creek bed below.

As we continued up the basin, we pulled off just south of Tyler's and dug a snowpit in a protected meadow at 8446'. Our snowpit (HS 130) gave us clear, unstable test results: ECTP 10 and 18. Propagation occurred at the storm snow interface (10) and on the faceted persistent weak layer close to the ground (18). Our snowpit was a great piece of data, but, after triggering an avalanche moments before, we had all the feedback we needed to stick to a conservative travel plan. We chose to stay in the basin and give a wide berth to slopes steeper than 30°. 

Once this period of active loading ends, the storm snow instability will settle out relatively soon. But we are not forgetting about the persistent weak layers that are still lurking at the base of our snowpack. 

We rode to Ski Hill then around and up onto Lionhead Ridge. We found buried surface hoar in both locations,1-1.5' deep, with soft sugary facets below. Along the ridge we had two small, but audible collapses, when we walked from our sleds to a snowpit. We had ECTP23 breaking on the weak layer a little over 1 foot deep with HS of 84.

Skies were overcast to obscured with light snowfall. 1-2" fell through the day, and light to moderate winds.

I recieved a call from BBSP patrol director at 9:50.

They had widespread, hair-trigger results during avalanche mitigation work.

A lot of slopes avalanched naturally before patrol made it up the mountain.

At 0900 they measured 1.8" of snow water equivalent (SWE) from the last 24 hours at the Alpine gun mount.

From obs on 12/29: "On our way out near the cabin I cut a line close to a creek to see if I could trigger something."

From obs on 12/29: "On our way out near the cabin I cut a line close to a creek to see if I could trigger something."

We rode teepee sat morning. Pretty good snow but relatively baseless. Broke an arm so fixed and went up blue creek on the west side of IP down Yale Kilgore road. 
we went in about 3pm so it was warm and super dense fog up high towards reas peak. 
rode several draws southwest of the peak prolly about 8000 but could be wrong. 
as we got to the open areas it was already super trenched out and setting up fast forming a nasty ice layer that was everywhere. Open areas, in tight trees etc. 

it was setting up but also warm so kind of turning to corn snow but the ice layer was so thick and rigid it was audible over the sound of the sleds. If you stuck a leg in it wouod grab your leg etc and it was everywhere we rode. 
 

rode until dark then rode out. Seemed to be getting worse the later it got. 
 

heard from others that they experienced similar conditions in big springs. 
 

hope this is helpful :) pin is approximate