Bottomless powder 2/16-18

The return to snow in Tahoe fulfilled everyone's wildest dreams, with approximately 12 feet of snow recorded at Kirkwood from Tuesday to Saturday.

After 6 powderless weeks Lauren and I were eager to get after it, so we headed up Tuesday night, planning to ski Wednesday to Friday. The snow started late Tuesday night and by Wednesday morning there was already a good foot plus on the ground in Meyers.

Wednesday morning.

We headed to Heavenly with Drew and Jason. On the third run I came up on a cat track too fast and tried to check my speed by leaning back (bad decision). I ended up landing hard on my tails on the flat and banging my shins and calves around in my boots. I spent the rest of the day icing them in the lodge, which gave me plenty of time to do a light edit of the helmet cam footage from the little bit of skiing that happened:



I ended up taking the next day off, but was able to ski a good part of the day Friday, taking it pretty easy on my shins.

Friday morning.

Chair 10 open Friday at Kirkwood: 8 feet new snow up top.

I got a couple good clips Friday, but I'll save those for another time. Perhaps next week when my legs will be fully recovered and ready for the next big storm.

Mount Tallac 2/12

Saturday, I finally tried out my AT setup on a real hike. Pascal recently got a set of new skis and suggested hiking Mount Tallac ("Tuh-LAK"), just outside South Lake Tahoe. At 9735 feet, Tallac is the highest peak on the Southwest shore of the Lake, making the hike about a 3200 foot elevation gain. Being that the last snowfall was maybe a foot on January 30th with it being generally sunny and warm ever since, we weren't expecting any great snow conditions. However, I figured the hike and view would be nice, and it would be good practice hiking with skins.

After a few tries finding the right trail head, and getting our gear in order, we started off around 10am. I quickly stripped down to a T-shirt, as the temperature at lake level was on its way past 50 degrees.

Pascal on his way up.

We ended up skiing this couloir, sticking to the North-facing aspects. The peak itself is hidden here, behind the prominent peak.

I learned pretty quickly that skins can be frustrating on steep terrain, or when snow sticks to them, or in particular, both of the above. I'm sure I'll enjoy encountering many different snow conditions that cause skins to work less well, but one of them seems to be a combination of wet and dry snow. The wet snow excellently prepares the skins to adhere to the drier snow, after which one slide backwards downhill. This is usually something I prefer to do without skins.

Taking a break and drying the skins out in the sun.

That said, most of the time they worked, and were of course indispensable where the snow was too deep to walk in. But, once we got onto a steep ridge line where the snow was firm enough to walk on, I found it much easier to simply hike with my skis on my back.

With the slow-moving sections, it took us about 5.5 hours to reach the summit. The view was great, as promised.

360 degrees. Click for bigger.

Pascal, chllin.

We started down around 4pm. Once we got down to treeline and the more North-facing aspects, the snow was shockingly good. "Powder" seems like a bit of a stretch, but it is probably the best word to describe it. Perhaps 12 day old powder but powder nonetheless. Venturing into the open center of the bowl, however, yielded a nice ice-scraping sound. The descent looked something like this (as always, click to vimeo for the HD version):



We've finally got new snow coming, starting on Tuesday with 3-5 feet forecast through Saturday. Looking forward to some legitimate powder.

Juneuary 1/21-23, 1/28-29

January has been a rough month for California skiing. There has been essentially no snow from New Year's day until January 30th, when a storm finally snuck into the region behind the back of the persistent ridge off the West Coast. I'll leave it to the weather bloggers to discuss why it has been so dry and why it will continue for at least the next 10 days. We've been making the best of the Spring-like conditions: crusing the groomers, the park, semi-soft/semi-ice bumps, and hiking around a bit.

Friday and Saturday (1/21 and 1/22) were nice and warm. Saturday we left Kirkwood early and Owen, Jen and I hiked above Caples Lake to have lunch and build a little jump to play around on.

Saturday 1/22: Jump above Caples Lake

 

Troy

Crashing

Troy 3

Bringing back the '90s

Sunday was less warm, and nothing ever really softened. It did remind me of ice-sliding on the East Coast though, so that was nostalgic.

Sunday 1/23: Cold and icy at Kirkwood.

The next weekend Owen and I headed back up for more spring skiing, this time with a new wide-angle camera:

We headed back to Caples Lake, this time being a little more ambitious in our jump construction:

It was perhaps a little bit too big for our jumping skill set, but we made the best of it, and had a really nice sunset...

Finally, I had a good time experimenting with the timelapse features of the new camera. Click the "vimeo" link to watch in HD.