Happy Birthday to me

As usual on my birthday I headed out to go and get some turns on snow to celebrate the fact that I am now older than I used to be. This year was no exception and I went out to get some of the sweet pow that has been falling over the past month. We headed down south to the High Sierra to get our powder fix and we eneded up at Tioga Pass which was open for the first time this year. We hiked up Mt. Dana and headed straight to the Solstice Couloir for some steep pow. This is what the entrance to the Solstice looked like... That cliff under the spine of snow was over 50 feet tall and pretty intimidating to drop in on... I cut a big notch into the cornices so we could side slip in and it was pretty manageable after that.Here's what our entrance looked like after the cornices got chopped away, again the cliff beneath me is over 50 feet, and the cornice to the right is probably 25 feet tall. Once on this slope everything was great and it was powder for 2,000 vertical feet. May 29th might be the latest I've ever skied powder...
Here's a shot looking up the line I just skied down. You can see my tracks on the left of the frame, and you can see how massive the cornice we had to drop beneath was, it was huge! The tiny notch you see on the ridge is the notch that I chopped out of the cornice with my ski, and you can see the cliff we were above while dropping in. Exhilarating to say the least.
After scaring the crap out of ourselves dropping into the solstice couloir we hiked over to the Powerhouse chutes. In the photo below Pat makes a big slash on the dust on crust pow heading down to the car we parked for this shuttle run. It was pretty good snow...
Mike Vaughan and I decided to drop into a different line in the Powerhouse zone and Mike went first and ripped it. I didn't ski this as fast as he did, I was impressed.
The next day, 5/30/10, we went down to South Lake to ski the couloirs on Mt. Thompson. Pat, Je, and Mike had never skied Thompson before so I put in a nice bootpack, thn realized I needed to ski neighboring Mt. Gilbert and headed that way to ski a new line in epic conditions. It was a beautiful, albeit warm day, I guess it gets warm this time of year...
After skiing a quick run on Mt. Thompson I booted up the north couloir of Mt. Gilbert by myself to take another line off my growing list. It was steep, possibly the steepest line I skied all year in the Sierra. In the photo below I am standing straight up, so the chute below is how steep?...
No one was watching as I skied this, but it was among the steeper things I skied all year, and those are definitely some of the shortest turns I made this season. There was a lot of snow moving and getting caught in my own slough was not how I wanted to celebrate my birthday...
Overall, I was really happy to have finally skied this line, I've been in this area so many times and not skied it... The conditions were good, although a little sketchy, and for May 30th, probably the best conditions I've ever had... This is one for the books, I don't think I'll ever ski powder this late in the year ever again...not on a line like this
Happy Birthday to me, nothing in the world makes me feel like skiing something like this.

Mt. Thomson

After our big day on Whitney and Russell, Oscar and I chose to head up to South Lake to enjoy some good snow conditions. The South Lake area has some of the easiest late spring access in the range, and generally speaking, peaks lower than 14,000 feet have better snow conditions... The lake was frozen solid so we cruised right accross it on our way to ski Mt. Thomson. A little while later and we're right below the awesome north/northeast facing chutes on Mt Gilbert on the left and Mt Thompson on the right. The summit of Mt. Thompson is about 13,400 feet, and the bench we are hiking across is about 12,000. I'd never skied on either of these peaks before, so we headed for the trident(three chutes) on Mt. Thompson. In the photo below I'm skining toward the base of Mt. Thompson, and I am glad to be there. After skinning as far as we could I set a nice bootpack up the mellowest of the three chutes. This bootpack would come in handy once we decided to ski all three chutes that day, the snow was so good we just had to...The first chute I chose to drop in on was the skiers left. The wind had created a funky rock/cornice crux that had to be negotiated to enter from the top. I suppose I could have downclimbed this with my skis off, but I felt the need to spice it up a little. Definitely the most difficult moves I had to make that day.After entering the chute safely, phew..., I enjoyed some of the best snow I've ever experienced in the High Sierra. Top to bottom, great snow, I'm pretty sure I hooted and hollered at least three times during my first run, and second run, and my third run too. After we successfully tracked out the chutes on Mt. Thompson we enjoyed the long run back down to South Lake. The snow was great the whole way.... It was an awesome day in the mountains, and after two 8 hour days in a row I felt the need to take a day of rest...

South Lake

The day after we skied the Matterhorn, Oscar and I drove on down to South Lake, just outside of Bishop, CA. The past weekend marked "Fishmas", or opening weekend for fishing season in the Eastern Sierra. This event is celebrated not only by anxious fishermen, but also by backcountry skiers excited to gain easier access to unbelievable ski terrain. The parking area at South Lake is at 9,500 feet making it a breeze to hike the 5 summits above 13,000 feet in the area. In the photo below my friend Oscar hikes across a still frozen South Lake with Hurd Peak dominating the skyline. Our first objective for the day is out of sight behind the peak in the right of the photo. Be sure to look for the people ice fishing in the lower left of the shot...After several hours of hiking we finally caught a glimpse of our first objective for the day, Mt. Johnson. Mt. Johnson is 12,871 feet at the summit, and a long way from the car. This aesthetic face has a number of skiable lines, but right now the only one that goes through is the chute on the lookers right of the peak. A while later and we're almost to the top of the chute. Unfortunately someone had skied our line the day before, but the snow was still really good and there was plenty of room left for us to make nice turns. Oscar makes his way up the bootpack towards the top of Mt. Johnson, the Bishop Creek drainage heads west down the valley behind us, and notice the White Mountains across the Owens Valley in the distance. And dropping, the reward for the slog was good, very good. I actually got a shot of me skiing too! The chute was good top to bottom, and we enjoyed smooth snow all the way over to the base of Hurd Peak.

Once you are all the way back to Mt. Johnson, the east face of Hurd Peak(12,237ft) is "on the way" back to the car. The inviting steep powder slope just couldn't be passed up so we skinned around and booted up for a lap. The short bootpack was tough after our already long day of hiking and skiing, but we were handsomely rewarded with powder turns.

Oscar pillages the fresh powder on the east face of Hurd Peak. We skied good quality snow all the way to the lake.

While on the top of Hurd Peak I spied my next line in the South Lake area, it is the obvious crescent shaped chute in the photo below. I'm not exactly sure why but this just calls to me and I can't seem to take my eyes off it, maybe I'll get to ski in the next week or so...