Blog?

I must admit that I have been remiss in my use of this blog as way of sharing information about my life for about the past 5 years or so... That being said, I have continued to be incredibly active in the pursuit of my athletic passions, skiing and mountain biking. If you are interested in knowing what I've been up to, please check out my Instagram profile: @jeremywbenson.

 

Happy Trails!

Between the storms

After a couple days of some incredibly good shallow powder skiing, we're in a bit of a lull between storms. Today the winds picked up and were gusting as high as 80 mph on the ridges.  A short sunrise photo session was over by 8:15, then Chris Doyle and I headed to Rubicon peak for a couple laps. It was blowing hard, but it was nice to be out exploring the coverage of the west shore backcountry. Upper elevations are stacked and lower elevations are thiiiiinnnn. Plenty of good skiing to be done, and several feet of snow in the forecast over the weekend.  Merry Christmas!!!!

3 days

Due to super high winds yesterday I didn't get out and ski, but the three days prior were fantastic. The snow was limited primarily to the highest elevations around the lake, but the places that got snow got a lot. Lets hope it keeps up...

Home again, home again

I spent the past couple weeks tripping around Thailand. Turns out that Thailand is one of the most enjoyable countries I've ever visited.  The people are nice, it seems safe everywhere you go, no one is trying to rip you off or steal from you and its beautiful. Did I mention the food? The food is incredible, and I ate Thai food 2 meals a day for 2 weeks straight.
We spent a few sweaty days in Bangkok while we worked through our ridiculous jet-lag. Then we headed north to Chiang Mai on the overnight train. We checked out the sights, then headed further north to the quiet mountain town of Chiang Dao.  While in Chiang Dao we checked out some caves and hiked to the summit of Thailand's third highest peak. Next, we headed to Koh Chang, a jungle island on the southeastern side of the country. We went snorkeling in the warm clear water and hiked through the jungle. We saw tarantulas, scorpions, cobras, and monkeys. Throughout our trip it was hot, oppressively hot, consistently the hottest and most humid weather I've experienced in years. I haven't sweat that much in a long time....
I was happy to return home to some additional snow coverage, but over the past couple days it got warm and began to rain, and rain, and rain. Instead of watching it rain all day I headed up to Mt. Rose to see if it was snowing up off the pass.  It was, and the skiing was pretty good.  It's still snowing up there, and raining by the lake, so I'm sure the fun will continue...

Hitting the road

After last weeks' freak early winter storm the weather has returned to seasonal norms.  The snow we enjoyed so much has mostly melted or turned to unconsolidated slop. A couple good days of XC skiing got me through until some of the lower elevation mountain bike trails melted out.  Today I headed out to Lloyds in Truckee and tomorrow we'll be riding on the south facing slopes above King's Beach. This might be a couple of the last rides of the year for me as Lynn and I are flying to Thailand on Thursday morning. Hopefully when I get back there'll be a little more snow covering the mountains.
That being said, it's kinda sad to put away my ride for the winter.  I just had the best mountain bike season of my life, and to be honest I wouldn't have minded if it lasted a little longer. My new bike had a lot to do with my enjoyment of riding this summer.  It was exactly what I needed during my knee recovery to get me excited and keep me excited about riding all spring, summer, and fall.  Thanks bike, I'll see you in 7 months or so...

Powtober 2012

After one of the longest and driest summers that I can remember we experienced a classic "summer today, winter tomorrow" situation.  Last Monday it started snowing and it didn't really stop for 3 days. We got 12-18 inches at lake level and three feet up on the crest. I'd been enjoying one of the best mountain bike seasons of my life, and quite honestly, I was hoping for a little rain to keep the good times rolling. Mother Nature had some different plans.
A wiser man than me once said, "When there is snow, you go skiing.". So go skiing we did. On Monday we did a XC ski through the peaking fall colors in Paige Meadows.  The bright orange Aspen leaves stood out in stark contrast to the raging winter storm going on. On Tuesday I found myself compelled to test out my reconstructed knee. I drove up the street to the backside of Alpine and Lynn and I hiked a couple laps on South Face. I was extremely tentative dropping in for my first run. Thin cover and variable wind-blown powder snow wasn't my planned first run in almost a year, but I couldn't help myself. Skiing slow and in the backseat, to try and keep my tips up, I made a couple runs and called it a day to save some energy for the days to come.
It continued snowing and I teamed up with Dave Rosenbarger and Oscar Havens on Wednesday and Thursday for some early season powder skiing that was some of the best I've ever done in October. My knee felt better with every run. The anxiety that I had about whether or not I'd be ready to ski again melted away with every face shot. I shot a little POV video, the skiing has been really really good!

A rough start to the season

Well, I haven't taken the time to sit and write anything about this season because we haven't really had one yet. While we did enjoy some exciting early, and I mean early, season snow and powder skiing, we haven't really gotten much of anything since. In fact, the month of December was the 9th snowiest month of 2011, meaning that May, June, October and November were all snowier. The only months this year with less snow were July, August, and September...

Both Squaw and Alpine are now open and the only skiing available at either resort is on man-made snow. What little skiing we do have has been fun and I've been enjoying relearning tricks in the park and really getting into my carves. I know that it doesn't always snow and that weather is cyclical in nature, but the complete and utter lack of natural snow is defeating and a very stark contrast from this time last year, or any of the past 10 that I've been living in Tahoe... The tourists have been here in force regardless of the lack of snow and open ski terrain making the ski resorts nearly unbearable.

I am hopeful that it will eventually snow around here and I look forward to skiing powder again sometime. Here's a quick video from October 7th, 2011, the best early October powder I've ever skied, and the best powder un of my 2011/2012 season so far... Happy New Year!

More May fun, and Pow!!!

So, Its late May. Our coverage throughout the state of California is truly without precedent. Interestingly it won't stop snowing. In fact, we got 10 inches of snow overnight last night up high. Toiday was yet another great May powder day. Alpine Meadows is closed for the season and that is actually great because it makes for a great place to go touring. I spent the morning up there today and got 6 or so runs of really good powder skiing, especially for late May!!!

Prior to our recent powder storm I went down to the southern Sierra with the hopes of getting it good for a couple days. Turns out that my timing wasn't great and it was windy as hell. Tioga pass opened for the season on Thursday and on friday morning it was so windy that no one was willing to go up there. We changed our plan and headed farther south where the winds were supposed to be mellower. It was our first time to Onion Valley/Kearsarge Pass and the winds were still incredible. We toughed it out and in the end we had a pretty good ski day in a new part of the range that none of us have ever explored. We almost made it to the summit of University Peak, 13,632 ft. but we were thwarted by the insane winds. Regardless we had a pretty fun ski..

Last week in the High Sierra

Last week the weather finally broke for long enough to get out an a long tour in the eastern Sierra. The weather window was only a couple of days and with work I only managed to head down south for a day and a night. That being said, our one day tour was big enough to tide me over for several days...

We headed down to Bridgeport, CA on the night of the 11th and crashed at our friend Tina's house. We got up and had a casual morning while we juggled our options for local ski tours. We decided on skiing the north couloir of Twin Peaks out of Twin Lakes. It seemed like a reasonable objective with options for extra shredding if we wanted. We blasted up to the bottom of Twin Peaks and completely changed our minds and headed much deeper into the range on a mega-tour. The photo above is of the east face of Virginia Peak, one of our objectives for the day, that's 2,000 vert...

Glen, Oscar, Andrew, Tina, Mark, and myself walked up the Horse Creek drainage and up to Burro Pass, between the Matterhorn and Twin Peaks. We crossed over onto the western slope of the Sierra briefly as we traversed to the west side of Virginia Peak, an obscure and rarely skied peak. We scrambled up some rock and wrapped around to the east slope of the peak and bootpacked up the slope to the summit. We reveled in the view and beauty of the day on this narrow fin of rock in the middle of one of the most beautiful mountain ranges in the world.

After a brief rest we dropped in on one of the steepest skiable slopes in the Sierra, for a couple turns at least... Other than a bit of loose wet snow sloughing down the slope the skiing was better than expected. Fun steep turns on a mountain that none of had skied before, not even Glen!

After skiing the east slope of Virginia Peak we weighed our options and decided to head back to Twin Lakes via the Cattle Creek Col, only a couple miles and few thousand vertical feet away. What's a couple miles and thousand vert when you're already on the biggest ski tour of the season anyway?

A little while later we found ourselves atop the Cattle Creek headwall between Twin Peaks and Monument Peak. Luckily there was great north facing chute for us to ski that was full of, you guessed it, powder!!! And only 5,000 vertical feet back to the car. We all enjoyed the heck out of the run and despite our tired legs everyone ripped the shit out of it.

After a couple miles of downhill skiing we found ourselves back to the cars at the shore of Twin Lakes with ice cold beers and really big smiles. 17 miles and 8,000 vertical feet, not too bad for a bunch of out of shape tahoe skiers. It was great to check a couple cool new lines off our lists and another great day to spend in the mountains with friends...

More May Powder

My calendar may say May 17th, but is sure still feels like winter here. Maycember, Maybruary, call it what you will because its snowing to beat the band here in Tahoe. The ski areas are closing and you can't really blame them. People are done skiing for the year. Flowers were blooming, snow was melting off at lake level incredibly fast, and then it started snowing, again... Overnight we got 8 inches at my house. I expected very little from this storm and we got quite a bit more than I bargained for. America's biggest professional bike race, the Tour of California, came to Lake Tahoe for the first time over the past weekend. The first stage was called off due to snow, the second stage was cut by half the distance and the start was moved from Squaw Valley to Nevada City. I can't blame them, there's no way I was going to ride a road bike either, I was too busy skiing powder...

May skiing

May in Lake Tahoe can mean any number of things. Generally it means the end of the season, the transition to working and mountain biking. This year we've got unprecedented snow coverage and the ski season is far from over. The ski areas are starting to dial back operations regardless of the coverage and we've been driving to the foothills to shred on our bikes. We will be skiing well into the month of July this year, the high peaks of the Sierra and even the mountains around Lake Tahoe should probably offer good skiing for quite some time. That being said, I've never had a chance to ski M1 in munchkins during the month of May, so this afternoon I went ahead and skied it a couple times. It was pretty good.

Tallac 4/26/11

On Tuesday April 26th I headed up to Mt. Tallac with John Morrison for a few laps on some of the sweet steep terrain up there. We'd gotten some new snow over the previous few days and the conditions were great for some steep skiing. There was a little ice in spots, but mostly sweet wind buffed powder. Unfortunately, two of our good friends, Kip Garre and Allison Kreutzen passed away while skiing on Split Mountain on the same day. More on this later...

More snow.....?

Yes, this is the winter that will not end. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I'm really psyched that we'll be skiing well into the month of July this year. It has been a challenge, though, to get consistent snow conditions with the weather changing on an almost daily basis. We got a little new snow last week and we enjoyed some powder-like conditions around the resort and in the backcountry. On Friday I headed up Mt. Tallac, for only the second time this season, and enjoyed the day with Mike and Oscar. I finally got to ski the Babycham for the first time this year and I was relieved to check that one off my annual to-do list. It was pretty good too...

East Side

The past week I headed down to the big mountains of the eastern Sierra to ski some powder with my buddies Oscar and Andrew. We went down Sunday night and got up really early to ski Red Slate Mountain on Monday. We pulled up to the Convict Lake parking lot around 5:30 am and quickly got on our way. The summit of Red Slate is 8 miles and 6,000 vertical feet from the parking area, so we hustled around the lake and started skinning once we hit the snow. There is an incredible amount of snow for this time of year and I can't believe the coverage on pretty much everything. About 6 hours after leaving the car we reached the summit. We skied the north couloir in incredible powder conditions, check out the video below:

That evening we met up with Andrew and headed a little further south to check out a line on the north side of Mt. Tom. I'd eyed this line before from a chute on the opposing side of the valley but I could never tell if it actually went through. Someone posted a photo on the web from the week before opening my eyes to the fact that it was actually a go. We got up earlyish and started hiking around 8 am. We were able to get on snow about 2 feet from the road. The snow down low was firm and the chute we were skiing was relatively steep, so we put our crampons on at the very bottom and kept them on the whole way.

Oscar and I were wiped out after our huge effort the day before so Andrew spent a lot of time up front kicking steps. I shared in the bootpacking duties for a bit and we made it to the ridge, 5,000 vertical feet from the car, in about three and a half hours. The view was incredible and I was stoked to be skiing on Mt. Tom for the first time.

Like the day before the snow conditions were great. The upper 2,000 vertical feet of the chute were good quality powder. In the middle of the chute we had a few hundred feet of challenging snow conditions, and the bottom half of the run was smooth fun corn snow. We skied straight to the cars exchanged numerous high fives and dried out our gear in the sun while we enjoyed some cold beers.

We had plans to ski the following day, but we woke to strong winds and stormy conditions on the ridges. After a couple of great days we decided to head home instead of suffering in the elements. Its gonna be a great spring, and there are so many things down south for me to ski...

What a run

Record breaking March!!! It wad the snowiest March on record in Lake Tahoe, and my back can attest to that. I even had to shovel the roof of the house because the doors weren't closing properly anymore. All the snow came to an abrupt end about a week ago and since then we've had unseasonable high temps, making for some strange snow conditions and weird avalanches. I've been taking some time to rest my heel and my body and do some spring cleaning and home maintenance. I also took a little time to throw together a sweet little video from the past month. What a run we had...

Oh My God

Its hard to believe how much powder we've skied lately. I couldn't be happier, looks like a record breaking year for us this year. I haven't seen anything like this in the 10 years I've spent here... We've been hitting airs and lines that have never been possible before, and much more on the way...

The hits just keep on coming

After an almost spirit crushing 6 week dry spell we have been back in the powder here in Tahoe for the past three weeks or so. Looks like it might stay that way for a while with the jet stream lining us up and high pressure settling in the Gulf of Alaska. A few days ago we got a warm wet storm that left us with 15 inches of dense awesome powder. Great snow for everything, especially skiing some steeps, short Tahoe steeps, but tons of fun nonetheless. Check out these little video clips of some of the fun I've been having lately.

recent skiing fun

The snow has stayed incredibly good and we even got 4 more feet through the past week. Here's a few little videos I put together from the past several days...

Snow-maggedon!!!

After six weeks of the driest winter weather I think I have ever experienced, the pow has returned to Lake Tahoe. Winter has returned with a vengeance. Most people couldn't be happier, I for one, am overjoyed. I wrote a little article for ESPN.com and got into a few photos with local photographers. Check it out here:

http://espn.go.com/action/freeskiing/blog/_/post/6144605/return-pow

The snow has been staying really cold and we're still skiing powder all over the place. Here's a short little video of me trying out my new Volkl Shiro's. Best skis ever made, quite possibly...

Milking the Powder

After pretty good success finding reasonable snow conditions yesterday I went out on a little tour on Stanford Rock with my buddy Oscar. We found some more good snow, still dust on crust and transforming into a thinner and denser layer of powder. We explored a few lines that we don't regularly ski in an attempt to search out some untracked. We found good open slopes but some discontinuous fall lines. It was pretty fun to ski some more powder and play around with POV camera.