www.turns-all-year.com Backcountry skiing photos from Bean Creek basin, North Fork Teanaway River Turns All Year: Previous Home Page Galleries This is a gallery of images which appeared on the Turns All Year home page in the past. Thumbnail images on this page can be clicked to view the full-sized photos, and lead into a slide show sequence for the gallery. The photos are from a backcountry skiing trip to Bean Creek basin, in the North Fork Teanaway River drainage of the Wenatchee National Forest. Surrounded by Earl Peak, Bean Peak, Bill Peak and connecting ridges, Bean Creek basin offers numerous backcountry skiing runs and beautiful scenery. List Galleries            < Older  Browse Galleries  Newer >

Turns All Year CD-ROM The complete version of this photo gallery is now available on Turns All Year CD-ROM. Below you can view thumbnail photos from this gallery. Turns All Year CD-ROM contains over 180 photo galleries, containing more than 3200 full-sized photos, from backcountry skiing and snowboarding trips in the Pacific Northwest.

from May 26, 2003: Bean Creek basin, North Fork Teanaway, Washington, May 9, 2003 Avalanche tongue in Bean Creek Ponderosa Pine Bean Creek basin Booting up NW ridge of Earl Peak Tom and Earl Peak Charles on S slope Charles on S slope Tom on S slope Skinning toward Bean Peak Skinning toward Bill Peak, with Earl Peak Booting up Little Bill Peak, with Earl Peak Tom on Little Bill N run Tom on Little Bill N run Tom in the trees Photos by Tom Moate and Charles Eldridge

Associated trip report: Conditions seemed similar to those reported for last week - not much change due to the cool weather. The main Teanaway road is still substantially blocked about 1 mile above the Beverly Creek spur road. On the trail, avalanche debris still largely bridging Bean Creek, continuous (barely) snow starting about 4400', nice corn everywhere. Mostly cloudy, so the smooth, frozen snowpack was just starting to soften when Tom and I arrived at the base of Earl's west face. We decided to climb first to the bump on the ridge between Bean and Earl and do a south-facing run. Nice but quite firm on upper steep section, then perfect spring snow down to the creek; totally stable, but uncontrolled slides were a concern. At lunch we checked out the snowpack profile at about 5200': about 3" solidly frozen, then 1" crumbly large grains over a substantial ice layer, then 3" crumbly large grains over a well consolidated base. We opted not to try Earl's west face because it seemed it might be too firm for the steepness, and instead skinned up the valley toward Bill. Heavy showers which had been just to the south for several hours finally arrived, and we stopped about 300' short of Bill's summit due to low visibility. Started skiing down, and of course the visibility started to improve, so we decided to boot up to the top of "Little Bill" (~1/4 mile south of Bill). Great views of the local peaks and a very stormy looking Stuart Range. Had a nice run back down into the basin on the 1/2" of new, through some tree bands and onto the main uptrack. Charles

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