Public Observation

Observation Details

Observations

Skied the Bumpkin on Saturday and found great coverage and difficult skiing. We were fairly late and found nearly ripe corn snow down low on the way up. Above 8400' the snow was crusty but soft on the climber's right side (more southerly aspects), extremely variable in the middle of the chute, and crusty but soft on the climber's left (more northerly, sheltered aspects). The top few hundred feet were great skiing, soft snow on top of wind board, and I found some soft snow but it was never too far from crusty. We dropped in around 3pm, which was way late and the snow had refrozen making for 7k' of mostly survival skiing.

Stability seemed quite good. There were some wind slabs up high, but they were very patchy and all chunks that I broke off were very resistant and non-planar breaks. No shooting cracks and no signs of instability. There was massive debris down low, but it was all many weeks old. No signs of recent wet slides, which was why I didn't turn around despite being late. On the way down there was nothing that slid or any rockfall despite it being warm and sunny. The sheltered snow in the north aspects didn't warm up, even down low around 8200'.

Ultimately, I think it was fun and worth it if you've skied all the other obvious lines on the wheeler crest (and like to suffer). The coverage was incredible and the line was great and continuous. There's a skinner to the top now as well. If anyone does go for it, get a really early start and descend while the whole line is in the sun. The snow was skiable to almost 6k', though we walked the final couple hundred feet because the snow was very punchy when we got back down to it. We also took the dirt road above 40 acres, but if I did it again I'd probably park on pine creek road and boot up the moraine. From there you could skin all the way to the route and ski most of the way back to the car, avoiding the mile of walking we did.

Signs of Unstable Snow