Extreme

Today we headed back down to the "halls of the gods" on Angora Peak. Its been snowing lightly for the past several days, and the current avalanche danger rating is "Low". It was perfect conditions to get out and ski some of the steeper terrain in the Lake Tahoe Basin. Needless to say, the snow was excellent, and except for some difficult visibility I had one of the best runs of my season... Check out the video, it was good. Notice that when I pull up in the middle of the line an enormous sluff flies by, good thing I knew that was coming!!!

Halls 2/7/10 from Jeremy Benson on Vimeo.

And it continues

A little spitter of a storm system rolled through the area the past couple of days. It threatened to drop a good bit of snow, but about 3 inches up high was all that came of it. Just enough to freshen things up a bit. Yesterday I spent the day touring around in Ward Valley with Oscar and Ernie, who was visiting from Seattle. We battled some poor visibility and in and out snow, but we found great skiing conditions in a couple spots and made the most of it.

Today I headed down to Angora and Echo Peaks with Chris Doyle and Ming Poon. On the way we passed the parking areas for several other popular backcountry ski spots and saw the weekend warriors out in force. Pulling into the parking area for our zone we were delighted to find only one other person heading up the same way. We hiked up to the top of the Halls of the Gods and found one of my favorite steep and aesthetic lines completely untouched. While there was some heavy slough, and a little bit of wind hardened snow here and there, it was pretty much perfect. We eyed some cool short lines on the way out and took another lap in our own private ski area, for today anyway. On the way back to the car we enjoyed some fun turns down Echo peak and we skied through part of the burnt forest from the Angora fire.

It was another incredible day in a long run of incredible days. There is nothing like having a couple mountains completely to yourself when the conditions are as good as they are. Ming got to ski the Halls for the first time in his life in near perfect conditions, and that is what it is all about...

Today in the Lake Tahoe Backcountry 1/31/10 from Jeremy Benson on Vimeo.