19-20

My partner and I toured over from Beehive into Middle Basin today (saw your car in the parking lot) and finding relatively dry snow in the shade headed for a west facing chute on the ridge that divides Middle and Bear Basins. The chutes walls kept it mostly shaded all morning and it was mostly cloudy as we started skinning up its apron. We had no cracking or signs of cohesion as we approached and a relatively easy boot pack up the chute. A couple of hand pits on the way up showed little cohesion within the top layer and a fairly dry snowpack underneath. We made plans for sluff management with protected spots to let it pass on both sides of the chute. While stomping out a platform we were able to kick off boot sized chunks of snow with no reaction My partner dropped first and his first turn kicked off a storm slab a couple of inches thick from his skis a few feet to his right against the wall of the chute. After a jump turn into a ski cut to one of those protected spots, he triggered a larger storm slab about 4” thick that propagated from the edge of our boot pack on one wall of the chute to the other wall about 20/30’ across and then ran the rest of the chute onto the apron about 300’ below us. No one was caught or injured. We skied out of the chute on the crust bed surface and spent the rest of the day enjoying some low angle trees. The chute was around 40° at 9,000’-9,500’ and west facing. We also noted a point release on an east aspect at about 9,300’ off the ridge separating Beehive and Middle Basin. It looked like a block of snow fell from a south facing cliff onto the slope below. 

Today in Hyalite there was roughly 5" new snow. It quickly lost cohesion when the sun came out and many size 1 dry and wet loose came off of steep rocky areas. I did not observe anything larger. Yesterday I observed a cornice fall on an E aspect of Mt. Bole around 9500 ft that probably occurred on 3/6. It ran several hundred meters downhill, entrained some surface snow, and appeared to trigger a size 2 slab when it encountered steeper terrain. That being said I was at G1 so I didn't really get a good look at it.

Multiple laps on Saddle today. New snow peeling cleanly on hard crust on ski cuts at steep roll overs. Would run until pitch tapered off. Ran slow but pretty big. Debris was 4-6 feet deep. South Central (upper face) of South Saddle and Face of North Saddle under 2nd rock were the biggest producers.

Dry loose avalanches on Blackmore. The snow stayed surprisingly cold and dry throughout the day.