A milestone, of sorts

On April 4th, I took a long lunch hoping to see Smoothie open.  It wasn't, but Granite Peak looked pretty inviting.  The hike was a bit more strenuous than expected.  Not because it's surprising.. it looks about as strenuous as it is.  But, as I was slogging my way up through the sun-warmed slush, I started feeling a bit nauseous.  Usually, that's a good cue that I'm above max heartrate for too long and it's time to back off, but a short rest to get my heartrate down didn't do much to help.  Oh, right.  Foggy head, nausea, achy body.  Probably the flu.  Oh well, I was halfway up, and there's something about making it halfway that tends to get you through the rest of the climb so as to not waste the first half of the effort.

The views alone were completely worth it.

There was this incredible, enormous hanging cornice along the ridge to the west, out of bounds.  I think that's looking towards Needle Peak.

We rested at the peak for a while, taking in the views, and contemplating the route down.  I've never been up before, so all possible routes were new.  I was settling on an entrance just at the peak into Direct Chute, via skier's right.  The entrance looked a bit tricky, based on a turn on a little ridge precisely placed to avoid the crevasse forming where the cornice was pulling away, but not too wide and cause a fall of the ridge into the next chute over to the right.

In the photo above, you can prominently see the little ridge which borders the right of the line.  After the initial turn in, it looked like a great, steep, fairly wide chute.  And as I was mentally preparing myself for the first turn, Jan says "I'm a little terrified of you doing that".  Hm.  That's never happened before.  Never.  I'm the scaredy-cat, bailing out of lines well within my ability level.

But, that was enough to give me pause, especially without my helmet.  While the chute was lovely after the first turn, there's still a big rock outcropping in the middle of the runout.   We headed over a little to the right, which was still nice and steep, and lovely slushy snow.

 But, someday, I'll be going back for Direct Chute.

The Perils of Water Falling from the Sky

It's been raining in the bay area pretty hard all week.  We were nearly unable to drive the low-ground-clearance car through the moat which had formed in front of our driveway.  A scene from a nearby block looked like this.

Snow's been building up at our rental in Homewood too.  There's a lovely roof cornice.  Many of these to be seen throughout the Tahoe area right now.

The excitement was when the roof cornice decided to encroach on the porch.  Quickly.  Violently.  Loudly.

 

Jan managed to jump out of the way, but, wow.

Perhaps we won't leave the front door without an avalanche beacon until spring comes.

bell to bell, epic day

It was crowded, yes.  Upper mountain didn't open.  But who cares?  We ate breakfast (though didn't cook it) in the KT line before opening, got free hot chocolate delivered to us, took a 20 minute break, and got on our last KT lift at 3:59pm.  2 runs an hour of epic powder, and free wind-buff refills at the end of the day.  West Face and alternates for the first half of the day.  Rock Garden didn't have a moment of bad for the second half.

Hopefully some video eventually, but for now I'm just too tired and happy.

experimenting with timelapse

It's been storming pretty hard today and tonight.  I've been playing around a little with some timelapse video from the new Gopro.   Not ideal footage, but still an amusing experiment.  This is about 3 hours of the snow this afternoon at our place near Homewood.

We were fortunate enough to drive up last night, before the 80 closed completely today due to an accident.   We'll see how crazy things are tomorrow, but it seems likely the crowds will descend on the lower mountain.

Sierra Cement?

Fortunately, I had to work today.  So we got up early, and hit the KT line just before opening to get a few morning runs in.  We lined up inside the KT gate, and managed about 12th chair.  I love weekday KT lines.  Everyone's equally pushy, leading to a line which works pretty well, as opposed to the unfortunate combination of clueless and jerk which often appears on the weekends.

Where we hung out on the lift for a while waiting for the lift to start again.  We lapped a line-less KT for a while, waiting for Headwall to open up so we could escape to higher elevations.  Avy debris was everywhere, but we did manage a nice lap in the first alternate.

Liane and Ed on KT

Once Headwall opened we headed there.  Ran into a nice guy we rode one lap of KT with on Headwall too.  How do you turn cool people you meet on lifts into actual ski buddies?  Inquiring minds want to know... I like my ski buddies lots, but suspect we'd all do well with a little more variety.

Anyhow, North Bowl was the run of the day.  Kept blowing in fresh for great turns, at both higher and lower entrances.

And we had it pretty much all to ourselves, so were unwilling to give it up for a few runs.

Under the lift on Siberia was nice for a run or two, but then it started to get pretty heavy, so we headed back for work.  Nice timing, because fortunately I had to work.

(All photos by Jan, who was somehow willing to take the camera out even in all the snain.)

Silvy Saturday

Yesterday, Jan, Ed and I lapped Silverado almost exclusively.  We tried a new entrance down the ridge off Broken Arrow rather than heading through gate 8.  Not bad, and a few fresh turns to be made in the wind buff.

Jan hangs out before dropping in.

Northerly aspects were still pretty sweet, where others were getting increasingly manky. 

We were having a ton of fun lapping gate 4 through the steeps of Bailey's Cirque, and then through the couloir skier's left of China Wall, which I've heard called Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.  In the shot below, it's the long chute, partially obstructed from view about 1/4 of the way away from the right side of the picture.

 For me, these are times 2, 3 and 4 ever through Mr. Toad's.  The first time was early season, where I barely managed to edge my way down a steeply edged 4-5' wide chute. (  Saturday, it was much more filled in, wide enough for some carefully chosen turns.  By the 3rd time through, I was holding something closer to a real line.  Woohoo.  Chutes are the best!