Meghan Kelly Teles!

So you heard (or experienced) all about the monster storms of the Sierra this winter bringing upwards of 800″ to some ski resorts.  That coupled with the lack of a true spring has left us an incredible snowpack well into June.  I had missed a lot of the epic June backcountry skiing because I was teaching at the community college, rafting, kayaking and getting educated in Swiftwater Rescue.  Although I had to be down in Berkeley for a bachelorette party on Saturday night, I felt like I need to get a ski in before leaving.  I hadn’t actually skied for almost 4 weeks!  Seeing a photo of a friend in front of the Crescent Moon chute at Roundtop, it was looking all time filled in, so I called up my friend Eoin who is a great skier with mountaineering skills and we were all set to head up there Saturday morning.

The skin out to Roundtop is convoluted, but we probably took the best route I’ve ever taken and we were at the base of the couloir pretty quickly. Here is a photo of Eoin approaching the couloir:

The couloir had definitely slid and was not the smoothest snow.  We wanted to boot up it to assess snow conditions, so we switched over to crampons and ice axes and headed straight up.  The snow was super variable – solid ice mixed with soft snow, mixed with breakable.  Weird!  Hopefully the sun would sort that out by the time we got to the top.  The boot was tough for that reason and it was awesome to have Eoin leading the charge through the sketchy top part.  We found some pretty rotten snow at the very top of the couloir which made us pause a little, but the hanging snowfield to skiers left had perfect smooth corn.  Going into this, I wouldn’t have thought I’d ever ski that snowfield because of the 200′ cliff at the bottom, but it looked to be the safest route now so we dropped in there, made two turns, and then got into the couloir.  I kind of butchered the ski, but I blame it on me being super cautious and the snow not being good… my goal for next year is to make more tele turns!  But it was definitely steep and required jump turns the entire way.  As predicted the most fun part was opening it up at the end and making GS style turns down the apron.

Roundtop skied:

Video of the steepness:

We skied out of there to a car parked at Red Lakes via Elephants back and the snow was pretty sticky.  It is hard to remember that it is June with all of the snow.  Back to the car at 1pm, I headed down to Berkeley to meet up with my friends for a night of 80s attire and bachelorette props in San Francisco.   Here are some photos from that night courtesy of my friend Jme (it’s just easier to spell that way):

The next morning I woke up and went on a 40 mile road bike ride with my friend Tim around the East Bay.  It was such a fun ride with super diverse scenary and I can see why he loves riding road bikes in and around Berkeley.  My friend Lauren flew in from Tahoe and we had some delicious homemade mango salsa and margaritas in Tim’s backyard before heading out to see Florence and the Machine at the Greek Theatre.  Shows there are always amazing and Florence didn’t disappoint.  Always fun times with fun friends in the Bay Area!  And always nice to get down there after a long winter in the Sierra!

As we sat down to dinner at the end of Day 4 it became clear that the end was near.  We could even see city lights in the distance.  We discussed the plan for Day 5, because if we wanted to, we could have skied out that day, however, we didn’t want to and as one of the other party’s guides said, “the corn was going off.”  So, we decided to leave our tent set up and backtrack to ski down Deadman’s canyon and then back to our camp.  Here is a shot of me making some soul turns below the shark fin above Deadman’s.

The wide open bowl down to Deadmans.

We skied until lunch and then packed up our tent and gear and continued on up to the Tablelands up the snow ramp in this photo.  The route involved a somewhat tricky downclimb, but set us up to ski most of the way to our next camp above Pear Lake Hut.

The splitboarders skied there splits a really long way from the top of the tablelands, which was a blast – great corn snow and turning back to watch the splitskiers rip it up kept me entertained… as well as more stunning Sierra scenery.

After a nice long, rollicking, ski, we found a camp site on a large rock perched above the Pear Lake Hut.  This is definitely the lowest elevations we’ve been at for 5 days.

James and I got pretty into pimping out the tent to maximize the space.  Here I am directing the work.

Final sunset on the High Route.  The smog makes it pretty.

I don’t have any photos from Day 6, but we basically skied out with very little skinning.  This was the first sign of the amazing high pressure weather we had for the last 5 days changing.  The winds were howling that night.

This was also the hardest day to stay with the splitboarders since skis are much better at holding a contour.  We made it to the car around noon and it was 65 degrees in Wolverton.  We drove through Sequoia National Park and dropped down to Frenso (Fres-YES!) where it was a sweltering 90 degrees!  Woah!  Temperature and culture shock… but the Chipotle burritos and beers were delicious.  We were home to Tahoe that night by 8pm.  Here is a map of days 5 and 6. 

Overall, the trip, the weather, and my trip partners were amazing and I am super grateful.

Total trip stats from the GPS:

5.5 days, 46 total miles,  19,397ft total ascent,  21,023ft total descent

Here is a map of the entire route:

We woke up after a windy night of sleeping on rocks and tried to wait it out for the sun to reach our breakfast spot.  I estimated 20 minutes, which was about an hour off, but it got people out of the tents – if only to hike to the sunny spot and have breakfast there.  Mornings were pretty cold.  Here is James with a rock frozen to his sock.

We had to descend and knew it wouldn’t be soft, but the south face was actually pretty good and it was nice to start off the day with a few turns.  This was where we made a small mistake.  We looked at Harrison pass and it looks steep and icy and while we couldn’t see Ericsson pass, we had a photo and to us it looked more inviting – at least from afar.  When we approached Ericsson pass, we realized there was a colossal cornice that would probably be difficult to get around, so we lost some valuable time and back tracked to Harrison – which, of course, wasn’t as steep as it looked head on.  James and I started skinning up Harrison, while David opted to boot since he didn’t have ski crampons.  Just like Deerhorn the day before, we found a mixture of consolidated and unconsolidated snow and in the warming sun, this translated to tremendous skin glop – so we booted the rest… and it actually was steep.

At the top of Harrison we were treated to views of Tyndall and even a sliver of Whitney – we were about to descend gradually for miles and meet up with the tradition Sierra High Route.

It was nice to finally gain some ground as you’ll notice in the map below.  One of the items we used was a spot messenger and it sent our loved ones our location and whether or not we were ok each night at camp and this one would finally cover some distance.  Here are the splitboarders skiing their splits – which is a pretty crucial skill here

We descended to the mouth of the Kern River Canyon and saw the 1st skin track we’ve seen since Kersearge.  We switched over to skins and started the long, but gradual climb up to Milestone – one of the highest passes of the trip.  Our original goal was to make it over Milestone, but the sun was hot and we opted for a nice camp on the East side of Milestone with lots of views and no one else around.  With the fresh skin tracks, we knew it wouldn’t be long before we saw actual people and so it was nice to have one more night of camping with no one else around.

Complete with a view of our next objective giving us the finger – Milestone Pass. Or maybe a thumbs up?  We needed the rest because we had plans for a super ambitious day 4.

We woke up and got out of camp a little after 8am – our earliest departure so far.  The plan was to climb 5 passes today – Milestone, “Not as Steep as it Looks,” Triple Divide, Copper Mine, and No Name or “Teleshorts” pass.  So we started the climb up Milestone.

After a long and surprisingly hot (for 9 AM) climb, we reached the top and were treated to a super fun corny descent down Milestone Bowl – known as one of the better descents of the SHR.  Here I am skiing Milestone (photo by David)

David harvesting corn

Cool view of the Black Kaweahs right before we ran into the first people we’d see on this trip.  That crew was a guided group from ASI and Geoff Clarke – telemark instructor extraordinaire – was their guide.  It was nice to see a familiar face out there!

Next it was up Not as Steep as it Looks – which was a little rotten in places and therefore renamed “More sketch than it looks” by me.  Back in our disguises…

Then it was a long contour down to the base of Triple Divide to don skins again and climb up to Triple Divide Pass – which was surprising easy.  And obviously super beautiful.  It helped that we got to do a fair amount of fun descending.

The last big pass was Copper Mine and we were all feeling super strong.  We powered up it awed by the scenery in the adjacent Cloud Canyon.

Happy to be at the top of pass #4!

Copper Mine pass is usually a downclimb, but this year it was skiable.  With a full pack I was a little apprehensive.

But once the crux was navigated, it was fun jump turns and a long contour around Deadman’s canyon.  Deadmans was unreal!

At the top of our final pass, we ran into some folks from Tahoe who we knew!  It was the 3rd group we saw that day after not seeing anyone for 3 days.  I guess that is what happened when you cover some serious ground on the traditional route!  Then it was just a fun decent down to a large flat rock we had eyed from the top of the pass as a good camp.  What a day!

Map from days 3 and 4.

When a super reliable and experienced ski partner of mine told me he was planning on doing the Sierra High Route, I rearranged my schedule and blocked out the first week of May in hopes that the weather would cooperate.  As the departure date became closer, it was looking more and more probable and we started planning things like lightweight tents, food and car shuttles.  Turns out my ski partners David and James – two phenomenal splitboarders actually, had all that stuff dialed and I basically had to show up.  Add to that the first stable week-long forecast in the Sierras since January and we were all set.  How lucky was I?

The plan was to start from Kearsarge Pass – which is different from the traditional Shepard Pass start, but allowed us a few advantages.  First off, we got to skin from the car.  Here we are all smiles and ready to disguise ourselves from the sun.

The second advantage was that the route took us by Deerhorn Mountain which has a super cool couloir that we were all interested in skiing.  The third advantage that we didn’t anticipate, but was pretty nice, was that we didn’t see other people for 3 days! 

The Sierra sun is super intense in May so we came up with some crazy disguises.  James kind of looks like a Taliban fighter… this is the same day US Forces killed Osama Bin Laden, but we didn’t know about that until much later in the trip (photo credit: David).

We skied a few runs and set up camp in Vidette Meadow.  David had scored a Black Diamond Mega Light tent and we had fun figuring out the best way to set that up every night.  This was our worst tent job, but a cool background (photo credit: David).

The next day we set out to ski the Deerhorn Couloir, our premier side route of the trip.  The skin up to the couloir was a great pitch and grippy snow, but the boot pack was tough.  Our first good view of Deerhorn couloir (photo credit: David).:

James booting up

View from the top and somewhat towards the rest of our route (near that flat mountain aptly named Table Mtn).

We were hoping to ski some corn on the way down, but a light wind and the high elevation kept the sun-exposed snow really hard.  So we stayed in the sun-protected snow and found some decent wind affected powder.  I did a little helmet camming, but the mount was not right so I’ll save you the time.  The run was steep and the snow was pretty variable, but it was a long, aesthetic, and exhilarating run. 

After skiing Deerhorn, we returned to the stuff we had stashed to make our packs lighter and donned our heavy packs again to continue on our route.  The full weight of the pack was not welcome after booting up a 2,000 ft couloir and so when we crested the next pass and saw how steep the next one looked, we decided to make camp on the pass and treat ourselves to late sun and stellar views.

Mt. Ericsson looking pretty (photo credit: David).

Here is a GPS track from Days 1 and 2 of our trip.

Stay tuned for days 3 -6.

It was Pat’s spring break and my friend Eric invited us down to his house near Mammoth for some spring ski touring.  The Eastern Sierras is possibly one of the best backcountry skiing areas in North America.  With big and aesthetic lines and a stable deep snowpack, there are endless possibilities.  Add to that mix unique desert/mountain scenery, natural hot springs, and a 5 hr minimum drive from any big cities, it is a true getaway.

Moonset over Dunderberg Peak

On day 1 we set out to ski Mt. Gibbs, but the road to the trailhead was snowed in.  As we hiked up the road, we realized we were much further from Gibbs than it appeared when we left the cars and we settled on skiing Mt. Lewis.

South/east sides of Mt. Gibbs – need to go back and hit this!

Mt. Lewis has some fun couloirs

hiking partners and Mono lake:

After arguing with a super serious German dude about what we should ski (I think he was having a hard time differentiating between the Sierras and the Alps), we settled on a SE facing couloir.  The rest of the aspects were not softening, even with ambient temperatures in the high 40s, because of a typical Sierra wind.  The snow was perfect corn in the couloir and as we skied further down, staying on those south and east facing aspects proved key to getting soft snow.  Here is my video footage from that day.

The next day we did a shorter hike up Mt. McGee.  The weather was not ideal – a mix of wind and snain, so we hiked up as far as we felt like and then skied down to go soak in the hot springs near Mammoth.

Pat and Louise on McGee

Spring time in the Eastern Sierras is always fun and with so many mountains to ski, it can be hard to leave.  We returned to Tahoe in time to catch Yonder Mountain String Band at Montbleu and celebrate Pat’s birthday.  Luckily, I’m returning to the Eastside in less than a week to start the Sierra High Route… which will probably have to be a multiple part blog post.

After a miracle March that brought upwards of 23 feet of snow to some Tahoe resorts, it went from winter to spring in about one day.  Sunday we were skiing powder and by Tuesday we were riding our bikes in shorts.  Record snowfall gave way to record highs.  Reports from the backcountry were not good – the lack of cool temperatures at night meant that the snow was not setting up.  We decided to check it out for ourselves and were treated to some calf deep mank during an after work hike.  We were also treated to amazing views and this beautiful sunset.

The sub-par skiing combined with the wet slide avalanche danger that was crushing California SUVs chased us back to riding bikes and skiing at the resort.

But today we woke up to a frozen snowpack and we decided it was time to go harvest some corn!  Being the first true spring hike of this year, we lamented forgetting things like ski crampons, but without too much of a struggle, we made it to the top of Mt. Tallac – a Tahoe classic.  Never a lack of great views:

We soaked up the sun on the summit enjoying a perfect windless day.  A long run down a south-facing bowl reminded me how much I love spring skiing in the Sierras.  The turns were as effortless as skiing powder. 

We hiked back up to get a second helping of delicious corn and I headed home to walk the dog and soak up the rest of the afternoon sun.  With the ample snowpack, we should be skiing well into July in the Sierras and with long spring days, the possibilities are endless.