December 02, Bullion Basin

On Saturday, my partner and I skied 4 runs down the Union creek drainage and one into bullion basin at the end of the day.  We saw one guy digging a pit in the south east exposure of Union creek drainage just below where the skin track meets the ridge. maybe that was you.  The west facing tree runs on the east side of bullion seemed mostly too wind affected to be worth skiing with barely breakable crust for 50-70 feet off the ridge. 
The shaded, more north facing aspects of Union creek stayed good all day and were well used by the end of the day.  The south facing aspects with full sun exposure were either crusty early or heavy later. 
  As far as people not being interested in your pit findings.  We heard some tele skiers complaining about the snow quality at the end of the day in the parking lot as my friend and I were raving about the good snow and sunshine.  From what we saw there looked to be quite a crowd of beginner skiers that day and I think the beginners always get attracted to the big sunny south facing slopes and are also not as likely to understand or be interested in snow pit findings. 

Thanks JD for the comprehensive snow pit report.
Glad it was a great trip.
Good stuff!!
Joe

Hi jdclimber; all went well.  I'll summarize our pit info:  it was similar to jd's, about 1/4 mile further.  The snow was 1-1/2 meters deep, and gradually increased in density as I slid a card into it.  The shovel compression got nothing until 3rd full-arm hit, then an uneven fracture at about 20cm.  Randyand I could not get anything else to move lower.  So it looks like two unstable layers, one where the last storm hit Wed-Thu and then the old rain crust a meter down.  We saw a fair bit of surface hoar Sat. Am, but it may have disappeared in the sun.  Don't know what that will do in shaded areas.


Any tips for getting a dog clued in for more BC skills?  We are trying to get our Samoyed trained fo a yurt trip to the Wallowas.

Telemack,
Re: teaching dog BC skills: I skied at Heather Ridge with Peter, Baldwin and Charlie the dog in 2005. Charlie was not actually skiing, but did lots more miles than us humans,  romping all around us in really deep powder. His person told us that he taught Charile to bite and lick the balls of snow from his footpads. By demonstrating how to do it on Charlie's feet.  Now Charlie can do it his own self. True.

Don_B:  Important issue, snow balling on the paws.  My Lobo already does that some.  Chewing on his paws sounds touching, but I've found it considerate to trim the fur between his pasd with scissors from time to time, and it tastes better, too. ;)

I thought I would throw in a photo from Dec 2nd.