Eastside Conditions Thread

[chill winston]

Re glacier Lodge, the road is open and dry all the way to the cabins at the end of the road. South fork trail hits snow very quickly once over the bridge, and conditions are great. Wet slides coming down from slide mtn/Alice but travel is easy up that drainage right now. Don't know about north fork but that is usually a much longer walk to snow line. See my pics from last weekend earlier in this thread

[powdork]

haven't been out in forever - heading up last-minute, and can't get mon off - so i only have sat/sun.
not familiar with shorter tours (other than carson pass, castle peak etc) and don't have time for a longer trip or further south - any suggestions on a short/sweet possibly one-nighter? was thinking kettle peak at twin lakes, it would be a tight fit imo but could prob squeeze it in; wondering if there's something else.

- never looked at pyramid peak approach/area (seems like that south-facing approach is always melted out) but always wanted to.
- haven't actually been in the virginia lakes area (plenty in saddlebag lake and bridgeport just not in btwn).

any suggestions would be appreciated. thanks!

Lundy is open but I'm not sure how far. Ski Dreams on the Matterhorn? Hunewill?

[JAREDS]

Thanks all. We grabbed a room in Bridgeport (w complimentary stinky feet smell) heading up kettle peak, always wanted to do that jah couloir up canyon from kettle so gonna go w tat objective.
Hoping to finally contribute something(pics) to this thread this year

[powdork]

jareds let us know what you find i might be up little slide tomorrow or monday

[Cosmic Suncloud]

made a short trip out to the grande lado este week before last.
great mountains and partners from home and mags.

day 1 - mendenhall




day 2 - mini morrison in pow before a mini storm

no pic on the down, so here’s a mini pic of the side



day 3 - humphreys with claymond
great to skin to the top, with ES hardmen breaking ahead.

claymond ripping the up


claymond ripping the down



day 4 –coffee drinking in Bishop


day 5 – langley with whatsupdoc and claymond, beautiful day

wud breaking free of the trees





day 6 – line on south side basin mountain - to the road

(some hardman pic)






great meeting up with claymond and whatsupdoc, and thx akbuin for the beta. you guys have a great neck of the woods.

[twistedtesticles]

mendenhall looks amazing. great pics

[bobz]

esavalanche reporting injuries from a big wet slide on Whitney mountaineers route.

[bodywhomper]

http://esavalanche.org/content/avala...taineers-route

Estimated R2-3, D2 avalanche in the initial gully of the mountaineers route up mt Whitney. Location 1.3 miles from trailhead parking, elevation 9300 ft. We encountered several groups who had been partially buried in the slide. Large 2 ft deep by 25 ft square ice boulders carried by slide. Several injuries, one requiring helicopter evacuation.

[somethingclever...]

Set out for Big Pine with ambitious plans to tick off a couple, if not more, major couloirs in the Palisades group. Arrived in the morning to find wetter than expected conditions with rain up to roughly 9k. Made it above the snow line and continued on to Third Lake where we elected to setup camp in the relative protection of the forest on the north side of the lake. We hunkered down hoping the weather would break in the afternoon to give us time to at least get up towards the glacier but no such luck. We spent almost the whole day in our tents and in the snow cave that ended up being quite the morale booster. The next morning came and we set out with high hopes for quality snow and to tag a big line (or two). We decided to head towards Thunderbolt. We spied two intriguing options (among many others).

The main N couloir (more like a big bowl) and a couloir that was previously off the radar that is just lookers left in the above picture. As we made our way closer to the lines we decided on the tighter couloir for two main reasons. First, it seemed like the more aesthetic line and secondly there was obvious wind effect in the much more wide open N face which was especially concerning given new snow amounts which were approaching 8 to 10 inches.


V notch and U notch are super fat though there is a seemingly massive cornice at the top of V. Maybe you could sneak around? Maybe not?


We continued to the base of our chosen line and found thigh deep, unconsolidated, consistent powder on the apron and up into the gut of the couloir. We were quite excited about it. We continued upwards and began to find evidence of wind slab. As we climbed the slab thickened and became reactive so we pulled the plug around the half way(ish) point in the chute. Disappointing but this line is steeper than it looked (which is odd as its normally the other way around) and we didnt think it would be a good idea to push our luck given the nature of the newly formed slab. Here are a couple looks at the line with our tracks.




We tucked tail and skied increasingly variable snow as we moved lower back to camp. I decided to bail given conditions as I had some things to tend to back in town. The other two guys stayed the night at camp and woke to 40mph winds down low and soon there after packed it up. Not the type of trip we had in our minds eye but sometimes it goes that way. Ultimately a memorable couple days in the mountains so good to be out none the less. Coverage in the area is unreal up high with everything looking to be in play for quite some time.

P.S. Awesome looking trip with a bunch of great lines Suncloud

[powdork]

V notch and U notch are super fat though there is a seemingly massive cornice at the top of V. Maybe you could sneak around? Maybe not?

Looks like you could drop in off the ridge looker's right and at least traverse into the coolie. Maybe one of the lines goes behind the rocks too for a better fall line and probably a rarely skied line

[somethingclever...]

Looks like you could drop in off the ridge looker's right and at least traverse into the coolie. Maybe one of the lines goes behind the rocks too for a better fall line and probably a rarely skied line

That was our theory too. The other guys were going to go for that the next day but the wind put a stop to that.

[AKbruin]

cosmic suncloud: That's a helluva lineup! Sorry our schedules didn't line up but that you were able to meet up with solid partners (except for whatsupdoc--that guy is so slow and lazy!).

somethingclever: Sounds a little familiar. Thigh-deep powder on the apron looks amazing though. I want to hear more about the snow cave. Thanks for the write up!

Incidentally, BGnight slayed the shit out of V-Notch last year. There are pictures somewhere.

[406]

Perfect corn on north side of kid mtn today around 11. Did tungstar bowl yesterday, bUT backed of the upper chutes to the Ridge because snow was getting hot and wind slabby.

[BGnight]

V notch and U notch are super fat though there is a seemingly massive cornice at the top of V. Maybe you could sneak around? Maybe not?

Just climber's left out of site is the way I went to the ridge. It was obvious when I climbed it last May.

Here's that same line last May. I also found the lookers right couloir intriguing except for the rock choke, but I think this year it would be easy to hop over (just saw in your pic the choke is gone!):




And V-notch last May. As you can see the part where the cornice is didn't even go this year:


Did you see these guys up there?:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BTPRGDLA...=pow_bot&hl=en

[BGnight]

I was out on Wednesday (probably same day as you guys). Some impressive slides. Needless to say, I wasn't able to get up on anything steep either. I also bagged plans on an overnighter this weekend due to winds and stability issues. Now we got crappy weather moving in. It's been a frustrating April:



A friend's party triggered a pretty significant slide on Thursday in near Bishop on a high north face. He said he rode the line, then a skier triggered a wet slide which quickly grew large then stepped down to a 2 foot crown.

[kidwoo]

Set out for Big Pine with ambitious plans to tick off a couple, if not more, major couloirs in the Palisades group. Arrived in the morning to find wetter than expected conditions with rain up to roughly 9k.

So that's what that was. I was up on Kidd today......some weird looking slides around there between 8-10k. Saw some other south facing stuff move today but the wind was definitely keeping things cooler.

[406]

^^^Was that you with the kayak or the pop up camper? We started out just after they pulled up. Kid had really nice corn despite the wind.

[Jack Burton]

All the mid winter posts from Big Pine plus BG's picture last week and AK's statement that Tinemaha rocks had us heading south on Friday.
What a mountain, will be back there some day! We did not make the top as we hit unconsolidated, unsupportive snow that had us turn around ~ 11k, we did end up with a fun 3k run down.

Snow line was ~ 8k and climbing quickly, I'd guess that driving to Glacier Lodge is no problem. Were I to go again very soon I'd try from the south side (red lake trail head I think), looking at a Topo we drove to the north side of Tinemaha creek where the road ends so ~ 1,500 vert in sagebrush, not too bad. Was cool to check out the area, our plan had been to try for Birch the next morning but we could not get within ~ 3 miles of snow line, deep mud just after a gate on drive up to Birch so we opted for Nevabhee Ridge.

Wet slides there had botched the last 1,500 of the lines so we continued up the drainage and ended up climbing to within ~ 100' of the top of Grand Central Couloir on Morgan North. The snow had been getting less supportive as I got closer to the top, one step just felt too loose so headed down. Good weekend of checking out new lines.

Obligatory look at Mendenhall on Friday evening
Tinemaha in the Morning
A lot melted in the ~ 5 hours we were above snow line (beer was ~ 6 inches deep when we switched to skins)
Got a ways up Grant Central on Morgan North before I hit some very deep unconsolidated snow and turned tail
about that close to the top
Mt Morgan North & Grand Central Couloir from lower on the apron

[JAREDS]

Well not a ton to share but here's what I have: met my buddy in SLT around 10pm, drove to Bridgeport and got a hotel. Left trailhead sat am 730, dirt until about a half mile before little slide. Huge bear prints, bears are out.
Tons of wet slide activity on all aspects. Didn't get on any objectives due to wind + out of shape.

[tone capone]

Sounds like you guys are having our normal spring weather!

[stoneman]

what's the snow line on Laurel?
is virginia lakes road open yet?

thanks.

[AKbruin]

Fucking winds, man.

(Nice job Jareds and Jack Burton!)

[AKbruin]

what's the snow line on Laurel?
is virginia lakes road open yet?

thanks.

I'm guessing its dry hiking to Pinner in Laurel but otherwise fine. As for VA Lakes, they're trying to get the roads open in time for Fishmas. But, well, they were apparently five miles away as of April 22 when this photo was taken (per facebook):

[Boissal]

Holy. Shit.
You guys have a bit of a snow problem...

[kidwoo]

^^^Was that you with the kayak or the pop up camper? We started out just after they pulled up. Kid had really nice corn despite the wind.

Haha, nope. Parked right behind the boat and right next to the pop up. Generic tacoma with a shell.

I'm in san diego for work so just wanted a quickie corn run on the way down.

winds=holy sheet


Wish I'd known you were down there. I want to talk about mars cameras.

Holy. Shit.
You guys have a bit of a snow problem...

Nah the snow's fine. It's all these crazy agencies trying to plow that's the problem.