Home > Trip Reports > May 9, 2009, Bean Basin

May 9, 2009, Bean Basin

5/9/09
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Posted by androolus on 5/9/09 1:28pm
Made it to within 1/4 mile of the parking lot, in Rav4. Started skiing 500 yards from creek crossing....Boots remained dry. Found mank, corn, and powdery conditions on Mary's peak. Saw nice turns down the chute on Earl. sun, clouds, grappel.


Edited to add photos:

Judy desecrated.


Stuart looking snowy. Someone set a skin track on the Beverly Turnpike. I was hoping that someone might have been skiing stuart but there were no other cars in the parking lot when we returned...alas. Perhaps this photo will inspire someone to ski it soon.



Way more photos (and resolution) and a video
Looked like there was quite a crew over there on Mary & Judy (another crew we met on the way out did what they call Judy - the lower prominence to Earl-based-looker's left of Mary with the nice larch rib and two bowls below it, and then they did Earl up/down via the summer trail).

Earl's west face to half-pipe chute was fun, but definitely a bit funky on the upper 2/3 with maybe 4-12" of relatively recent snow. It was spank-it-or-be-spanked sort of snow. Though there had been some small sluffs on a few steeper pockets, we didn't get any sliding going. We did get rollers going. A few got as big as truck wheels and really got cooking before stopping or falling apart. So it was good to be mindful of each other and traverse over and see what's coming fairly often.

The best skiing was down near Bean Creek in the basin bottom, so two of our 4 went up for a 700 ft run back down to the creek.

It was nice to be able to ski back to so close to the creek crossing, and to be able to keep feet dry.

If we have dry conditions, next weekend might finally see full-on corn up there, though it will be a race with decreasing cover.

Yours truly was part of the second Earl crew, after a visit to Judy, followed by the big crew (did not see the Maxwells among them).  Certainly high water content stuff.  We figured any west Cascades slopes would have too much mush.
Nice being able to drive well up Beverly Road although it required some Legacy extraction at 3000'.
I guess if the creek is so easy to cross then you have to walk in more afterwards.
Were you part of the brew crew Jim? I stumbled past the party in haste to remove my boots. The boys remarked a few times, on the way home, of your generosity...and left empties in my car!

We were the brew crew.

A few pics (none from the descent, when a squall came in and the light went flat):


The west face ski starts just below the guy playing "name that peak" in the third photo, and ends ~1.8K later in the basin bottom.

author=NickD link=topic=13280.msg55353#msg55353 date=1242005598]
Nice being able to drive well up Beverly Road although it required some Legacy extraction at 3000'.


That would have been us.  Thanks again for the push!  We should have headed your way, didn't find much snow worth skiing out our way.

We hear there were two subies needing help on Saturday. We helped one crew that appeared to be the first car up there in the AM, and they said they were heading to Iron and we said we were off to Earl. This subie crew had apparently been digging for a while before we arrived and the 4 of us helped lift and push. If that was you, thanks for making it quite clear that we'd reached the sensible parking spot  ;D.

Russ and I skied up that way to Iron a few years back, and due to lack of snow down low and only relatively short options off Iron, we decided to hop over Mary's into Bean Basin, and ended up doing a trifecta that included Earl.

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may-9-2009-bean-basin
androolus
2009-05-09 20:28:42