Photo: Beartooth Basin / Instagram
Wyoming’s Beartooth Basin is one of North America’s most unique resorts for a simple fact: it’s the only summer-only ski area on the continent. With an elevation above 10,000 feet, no lodge, and no warming hut, it’s a very bare bones facility that was originally established as a summer training ground for alpine ski racers back in the 1960s. Over the years it evolved into a ski area open to the public between late May and into late July and has capacity for just 100 skiers when operable.
Operable is the key word. Beartooth Basin hasn’t actually been open for summer skiing the past couple of years due to insufficient snowpack. That changed this year though as Beartooth recently announced it’ll be spinning lifts this summer starting on May 26, 2025 (Memorial Day). To prepare for the upcoming “season,” staff are clearing out whatever avalanche hazards they can identify, including a cornice where they filmed a controlled avalanche explosion.
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Avalanche mitigation efforts like this have been in practice in the U.S. as far back as the late 1930s.
“The way that explosives work on the snowpack is that they create this pressure wave,” says Rebecca Hodgetts, an avalanche specialist with the U.S. National Avalanche Center. “What we are trying to do is impact these layers in the snowpack. The snowpack gets layered over time. As the snow falls during the season, each storm is slightly different as is the weather between storms. So, you get these layers or interfaces in the snowpack. Some layers are weaker or stronger than others. This relationship between weak layers of snow and the slab above it is the basics of how the avalanche phenomenon occurs. You have this sandwich of different layers which have different strengths”
