Shut down by the wind

Sometimes, even when everything has been going your way for a while, you get reminded that mother nature is in charge. One morning last week I was meeting up with photographer Jason Abraham to shoot some pics down off Tioga Pass and South Lake. The wind was so incredibly strong that there was no way we were going up onto the plateau, so we went with plan B. Plan B was to take our time and just ski something on the lower slopes below the plateau. Here's an black and white grainy shot of the plateau. From this spot you could barely tolerate the wind, being 2,000 feet higher up and it would have been impossible to stand...We settled on a sweet looking 3,000 foot chute that was our best option for soft snow on this day. Here's a shot of Abro shredding the corn on this lower chute off Tioga.The lower third of this chute became a big dirty debris filled channel of snow. The upper 2/3's of the chute were great snow, but from about here down was pretty terrible skiing. You can see the power plant road still far below us in this shot.

After descending this chute we decided that it was, in fact, the best snow we could have skied on this particular day. It was just one of those days that if you were at home you might not have gone skiing... We ended up on the other side of Lee Vining Creek and had to find a spot to cross, Abro went for it on this questionable log jam. Lets just say that I didn't choose to follow him. A moment after this shot was taken he was standing knee deep in the creek. I did a little backtracking and found a good clean spot to cross. Luckily we got a ripping fire going later that night and he was able to dy out his boot liners...