May 13, Earl Peak

Yes, another report from the Beverly/Bean creeks area. This one is becoming a yearly event for me - it's just such a great spot to hit in the brief window between getting road access and losing the snow.

I've never seen so may cars at the start of the Beverly Creek trail (actually, a 5 minute walk short at the big snowpile that's probably about gone thanks to this week's heat). We headed up Bean Creek, and had no problem with the creek crossing. We got skis on shortly after, just beyond the first big slide path the trail crosses. Soon, we were in the basin proper, and headed along the west side of Earl and up to the ridge that runs to the west of Earl along the south side of Bean Creek Basin. Despite our lazy-butt start, the snow was still prety firm along the entire route, just enough softness on top that a small thwack with the ski would get the edge to hold. Skip had some special fun with emergency high-angle biological functions due to a little too much coffee (his tip - using ski leashes makes this MUCH easier). That gave me plenty of time to sit on the ridge and contemplate the views of the Stuart range, Rainier, the desert, etc.

We then headed up the ridge toward Earl, and took another break at the north end of the summit ridge. We saw another party of three skinning up to the summit from the Stafford Creek side. We saw some tracks from another party that had been having some fun at the opposite end of the basin (Bill's? Mary? not sure which is which - that peak that sits on the edge of Beverly, Bean, and 4th of July creek basins). After Skip kind of regrouped and felt normal again, we headed down. It turned out to be a good day to be lazy and slow. We headed down at close to 3PM, and there was just an inch of melted corn on top of a fairly firm base at the top, changing to perhaps 3 inches lower down. The surface was quite smooth, and the turns were fast and fun. We had the roughly 1700 ft run to ourselves, save for some faint tracks from earlier in the day when it was clearly a bit more frozen up. We could also see faint evidence of a few older tracks - perhaps Charles and crew from earlier in the week.

I dug a small hole to see what was under the firm crust. The crust went about 10-12" down (at 5,500 vf above sea level, where the slope starts easing below Earl's west face), then there was a lower density layer for perhaps 2", then another hard crust beneath that. As a result we kept our eye on how deep the surface melt was going, and were happy that it never got down to the lower density layer, but the amount of water that was undoubtedly percolating down made us wary of any unsupported rollover type of slopes.

We had to go back for a repeat, being the cream (of corn) skimmers that we are. The second climb was less eventful, and the second trip down was even better than the first, with 3-6" of prime corn on a firm base, and plenty of untracked slope  to enjoy (not that our tracks from the prior run were anything but an aesthetic problem, as you couldn't feel them if you skied over them). I love how open this area is - despite the many cars at the start, we saw only one other party while above the basin, and only a few tracks on our route. Everyone else was surely finding other great spots to ski, though I have yet to find another line in the immediate area as nice as the one we lapped - it is moderately steep throughout (estimate high 20's to 35 degrees), with some wide open slopes, options for a bowl or a few ribs, then a very fun half-pipe feature that spills to another wide open area above the creek. It is so fun to have a consistent pitch mixed with little terrain variations to play with on a long run. And yet the run is over oh-so-quickly. By now it was close to 5PM, and despite the primal urge to do it again, we engaged our limited higher thought processes and decided to head out.

The ski out the basin was unsurprisingly slow snow, but it was still skiing, and then the hiking was made more pleasant by the amount of snow still on the remainder of the route. We encountered a couple at the cars who had gotten their car stuck in a snow patch just downhill of where we were all parked. They had their shovels stuck in the snow, and were using golf clubs (irons, not sure which number  ;)) to apparently try to scoop snow out from under the car  ???. It was kind of fun to watch, but a mixture of good samaritanism and selfisness (they were blocking our route to dinner) kicked in and I convinced Skip to go with me to help them while we still had boots/gaiters on. The golf clubs went back in the trunk and the extra bit of (tired) muscle had them on their way quickly.

I imagine the road will go to the parking lot this weekend, and there might be enough snow for some fun up in the basin for one maybe two more weekends depending on temps next week (and depending on your own threshhold on approach/turns ratio).

We then saw Stimbuck and crew coming down off Stuart, making us feel even more like the late-rising-slow-moving lazy butts that we were, and yet we had to agree that we still had an awesome day.