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...

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...

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...

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.

A couple more shots

I recently found a few more published shots that have just come out. As I was walking through the airport the other day on my way to British Columbia I stopped to check out the most recent issue of Skiing Magazine. It was their Resort Guide and there are beautiful shots from all of their favorite resorts. It just happened to be me on the Alpine Meadows page in a cool shot by Will Wissman from last year. I don't get to shoot with Will often but it seems like every time we do get a chance something ends up getting published. In my ongoing quest to become a writer I recently had an article published in Tahoe Quarterly Magazine. This article is about"sidecountry", or resort accessed backcountry, skiing in Lake Tahoe. I think its about 2000 words and they even put a shot of me in there... This photo is from last year, just up the road from our house in the year round playground of Ward Valley.

Home again, Home again

So we rafted down the Grand Canyon for 25 days. It was one of the most amazing adventures I've ever been on. More about that later on. Since we got home on the 18th of December the skiing is as good as I've ever seen before and around Christmas. We've got 200 percent of our usual snowpack for this time of year, and that is making for some great skiing. Both the resorts and the backcountry have been absolutely going off and my first week of skiing for the season included plenty of runs that often don't fill in until February. Pretty much everyday that I've skied this season has been a powder day and thats a hell of a way to start the season. Here's a little video I shot the other day on the 27th of December at Alpine Meadows.

12/27/10 Alpine Meadows from Jeremy Benson on Vimeo.

Opening Day at Mammoth

Thursday, November 11, 2010 was the opening day of the season for Mammoth Mountain. Luckily ESPN wanted me to cover the event for a web post and I was happy to oblige. I lined up tickets for myself and Jason Abraham and we cruised on down to do some skiing. The recent snow and cold temperatures made for an exceptional opening day.

Check out my article here: http://espn.go.com/action/blog?sport=freeskiing&post=5796053

November 10, 2010 Powder day?

Just the third day of the winter with snow on the ground and we're already skiing POW!

A little settlement coupled with another foot on top made for some great early season turns. Mike Vaughan and I went back to Alpine and hiked around for a few hours. I made a little video.

11/10/2010 Alpine Meadows from Jeremy Benson on Vimeo.

Skiing! First turns of the season

Just a couple days ago we were enjoying the best mountain biking conditions of the year here in Lake Tahoe. Consistent rains and nice warm temperatures made this fall one to remember on the trails around the Lake. That being said, once November hits I'm usually ready for it to start snowing in earnest, or at least go one way or the other, indian summer or winter. A couple days ago it started raining and winter flexed its muscles. We only got about a half inch of snow at lake level, but up high there was anywhere between a foot and eighteen inches. I went out for a tour of Alpine Meadows and found some fun snow to ski. It was definitely some of the thinnest cover I've ever skied, but was fun nonetheless.

November 8, 2010. from Jeremy Benson on Vimeo.

I used my GoPro POV camera to catch some interesting video of the action. This was one of the rare times of the season when speed is not your friend and you defintely don't want to take any chances. It was great to get out and move around on the snow regardless. If you decide to go, bring your rock skis....

Back at it!

Welcome back to fall. Its been a long summer for me. Since the beginning of June I've been working like a madman to pay off last winter and prepare for the coming one. The colors are changing, temps are dropping, the ground is wet, and the mountain biking has been just incredible for the past month. We've finally made it to magazine season and I've recently found some published shots from last season. The Skiing Magazine Gear guide came out and I found 2 shots of me and a shot of Lynn in there.Here's a half page of me on P.17A full page on Pg. 27.
Lynn scored a full page shot on P.57. It was good issue of Skiing for the two of us. Be sure to check out the Skiing Magazine gear guide for the most legitimate ski test in the industry.We also got the most recent issue of Mountain Sports and Living Magazine where there was another full page shot of me at Alpine Meadows in their resort guide. The day we shot this photo at Alpine Meadows was a great day of skiing and we were lucky to have been able to get a shot like this.

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.

The winter that will never end

Since I last posted about my adventures on snow it has continued to snow and snow and snow here in Lake Tahoe. All the resorts have been closed for almost two weeks and our snow pack has only increased in that time. With Lynn being injured I've been staying close to home and trying to get out skiing as much as my work schedule will allow. There is very limited mountain biking to be done since all of the good trails in the area are still snow bound and will remain that way for some time. Lots of people are "over it" around here, but those who are willing to enjoy whatever mother nature has to throw at them are still out getting it good in the mountains throughout the state of California.

Luckily for my friends and I, we are of the mind that when there is snow, you go skiing. This is especially true when there is powder, and even more so when there is powder in late May. The other day my friend Joe and I headed out to Ward Valley(my backyard) and found great skiing conditions on all aspects, including powder on north facing terrain. In the photos above and below Joe enjoys some of the best May powder turns he's ever had.

Today was quite similar, it started raining at lake level last night and we got another 6 inches or so of new snow up high. I skied a few laps up at Alpine and, considering the time of year, I was pleasantly surprised by the conditions. It was snowing hard all day and looks to keep up through the day tomorrow.... Looks like tomorrow might be another powder day. The only drawback to getting all this new snow this time of year is that as soon as the sun comes out, it is all over for a couple days, nothing escapes the sun and it's radiant warmth this time of year.

Tioga Pass

On the third day of our trip down south we headed up to Tioga Pass to ski a line that I've been looking at for years. While this may technically be the end of the Dana Plateau, I refer to this peak as North Gibbs. The line we went to ski is on the lookers left skyline right off the peak. The ascent route to access this line is a little different than climbing up to the plateau like you would to ski the coke chute, the ripper, the third pillar, or kidney lake. Instead of climbing the coke chute we headed up the chute to the lookers left, right above Oscar's head in the photo below.
After skining up to the base of the chute we switched to crampons to boot up the firm snow. After topping out on the chute we still had a ways to go.
Coming out of the chute the pitch eased back a little and we were able to skin to the top of North Gibbs. In the photo below Oscar climbs with Mono Lake and Tioga Pass Road in the background. Another beautiful day!
After several big days in the High Sierra we were wiped out and happy to reach the top of our line. I've been looking at this one for years so I got to ski it fresh. Oscar captured a good shot of me dropping into this one... This line was huge, once it goes out of view it just goes on and on, I'm glad to have finally skied this.
While we were on the top of North Gibbs we looked over at the north side of South Gibbs, and it looks good. I think we may have found a few more things to hit the next time we're down in that area... Another great day down in the High Sierra, spring in California, does it get any better?

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...

The shoulder of Mt. Mallet

After an exciting day on the aiguille du encrenaz and a couple trips to the hospital I had a chance to get back out with the Chamonix crew for another exciting ski run off the Aiguille du Midi. Our fearless leader Dave thought we should hit a line called the shoulder of Mt. Mallet, something he thought hadn't been skied all year. If, in fact, this line had not been skied all year it is due the fact that it isn't really all that easy to get to. One could climb up it and risk death in the serac fall zone, or you can go the way we went... After skining for a while, climbing a chute, rappelling into another drainage and skining up the glacier, we finally got to the crux of the route. This incredibly steep and rock face is the only reasonable way up to the top of our line. The steep bootpack was a little hairy, especially when you consider the exposure beneath us, it felt good to have two ice axes for this one...We finally made it to the top of the line, and our big crew had a little difficulty fitting onto the steep ridge at the top. Dusan, Giulia, John, and Jim, and of course Dave and myself, was quite the massive group. These guys ski together all the time, I was just tagging along for a couple weeks, and I'm glad I had skilled and experienced Chamonix "locals" to show me the ropes, no pun intended.
Since Dusan put in a healthy amount of the final bootpack he got to drop first on the top. Here he examines the powder with the towering Dent du Geant in the background. Its a long way to the glacier from here and the skiing was pretty darn good most of the way. It was fortunate that we had such good weather while I was there, because even though the skiing wasn't "all-time" it was pretty good, and beautiful sunny days make you want to get out.
About halfway down the chute opens up into a sweet steep face. Believe it or not this is actually a picture of me grabbing a few pow turns way above the glacier below. Chamonix is cool. Note the seracs hanging off the cliff faces all around, that is why you don't want to approach this line from the bottom, they have a tendency to just fall off whenever they want to.
Once we got a bit lower down we could actually open it up and carry some speed. In the photo below I'm cruising down an enormous face with a steep wall of glacial ice in the background. There aren't too many places in the world where you can ski in mountains like these, truly an incredible experience.
The shoulder of Mt. Mallet was the last cool line that I got to ski in Chamonix. With volcanic ash disrupting air traffic throughout Europe we were lucky to get home only one day later than we were supposed to. This was very fortunate due to Lynn's knee injury which we are now finding out to be somewhat less serious than we had originally thought. Its nice to be home, and with the recent snow here in California it is time to get after it down in the high sierra.

More powder skiing in Chamonix

The other day we headed out in search of more powder. All the easy to access lines seemed to be heavily skied, but luckily Dave, Dusan, and John had the brilliant idea of going to the top of the aiguille de belvedere, istead of just going to the col like hundreds of people before us. The extra thirty minutes of bootpacking afforded us a completely untracked steep chute that was sloughing big... Here Dave and Dusan stand in front of the Aiguilles Rouge, the range on the north side of the Chamonix Valley. Here's a shot looking east from the top of the aiguille de belvedere, you can see our bootpack coming up from the col, where everyone seems to drop in. This run put us down in the Berard Valley where we had a several mile long ski out to the town of Buet. In Buet we enjoyed some beers before jumping on the train back to Chamonix.
And dropping, Dave dives into a sweet but heavily sloughing pow run. This run was pretty steep, but really pretty mellow by Chamonix standards...
And Dusan follows suit, scoring a little pow for himself. I went last down this section and covered the boys in the cloud from my slough, apparently it was pretty exciting, but I didn't even see it happen. It was another good day of adventure in the mountains around Chamonix.

Cosmiques Pow, kinda...

Today I woke up to a loud banging on my door. Confused and startled by this, I had no idea who would be knocking at this hour since the plan had been to take today off from skiing. It was Dave, he said "40 cm's meet me at the Aiguille, quick." I wasn't ready at all, but made it over there in 10 minutes for the first Box. Seeing no other pairs of fat skis in the Tram we took a leisurely stroll over to the Cosmiques. This was my first foray into the Cosmiques couloir, one of the most classic and heavily skied lines in Chamonix. This is one of the go-to ski area style runs off the Aiguille and a super sweet couloir. In the photo below Dave inches his way down into the entrance of the Cosmiques, a spot where a lot of people rappel. The firm snow, or ice as I call it, was little dicey through this steep and rocky section.
Once we got through the rock cruxes we found some nice wind deposited pillows of snow for the lower two thirds of the run. The deposits were really deep and face shots were plentiful, with the occasional pure ice turn that would sneak up on you. But if you played your cards right you could avoid the ice and laugh your way to the bottom.
In the photo below Dave steps on the throttle and enjoys some of the best turns of the day.
We had decided to hike back to the Aiguille Mid-station to avoid the thin cover thrash out the bottom to the tunnel, and on the way over the clouds and the peaks made a perfect backdrop for a cool shot of the tram cars as they passed overhead.
Then we looked down the hill at the smooth dust on crust and we just couldn't pass it up. The snow was blower, but only about 8 inches deep on top of a smooth crust. The lower pitch of the Aiguille has some really great terrain, and I can only imagine how fun the runs down through this zone are when you can ski to the bottom. We managed to ski most of the way, and then we continued down on a trail to the tunnel where we got a ride back to town. In all, we got about 7,000 vertical feet of sweet dust on crust skiing, followed by about 1,000 feet of downhill walking.
It was a good day indeed!