Results 176 to 200 of 258
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04-30-2021, 10:16 PM #176
Gimpy, here's the pic. Courtesy of Jin Joo's FB:
https://scontent.fsac1-2.fna.fbcdn.n...64&oe=60B3CBF1
Unknown isn't in view, but by the looks of everything else, i'd assume it'd be pretty boney too.
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04-30-2021, 10:24 PM #177
Drove up to Tioga Pass for a sunset tour. Pretty low tide, about what you'd expect for end of April in a drought year.
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05-01-2021, 07:10 PM #178Registered User
- Join Date
- May 2011
- Posts
- 26
Came here lurking for tioga beta, and realized my month old pics of couloirs on dana are of interest to people. Here are pics cropped from the originals of solstice and dana couloirs. Maybe they'll retain some more detail. Backstory: These were taken first weekend of April, almost exactly a month ago on the plateau on the way from top of coke chute to kidney. It seemed that the couloirs were wind stripped on top of the low snow year. Top of solstice shows rocks, and it seemed like a rock band spanned the entrance to dana couloir. Since April didn't have much snow, I'd be surprised if the low tide story in these couloirs has changed dramatically from a month ago. I'm hoping there's less wind-stripped objectives in the area!
Solstice Couloir, April 3, 2021
Dana Couloir, April 3, 2021
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05-03-2021, 11:10 PM #179registered abuser
- Join Date
- Oct 2003
- Location
- tahoe
- Posts
- 3,428
Opening weekend tioga.......bailed on classic dana tour cuz nuking westerly so went across the street
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05-04-2021, 01:42 AM #180
Nice! How's saddlebag lake road?
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05-04-2021, 01:48 AM #181
open
I didn't believe in reincarnation when I was your age either.
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05-04-2021, 09:47 AM #182
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05-04-2021, 10:31 AM #183Registered Useless
- Join Date
- Oct 2016
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- tahoe de chingao
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- 848
beautiful pic splitter
also oof
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05-04-2021, 11:23 AM #184
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05-05-2021, 06:28 PM #185Registered Useless
- Join Date
- Oct 2016
- Location
- tahoe de chingao
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- 848
oh bro! i just meant "oof" there's no snow
I had no idea that was a photog acronym for out of focus
I thoroughly enjoy your pics (especially around 431) and was expressing my gratitude!
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05-05-2021, 09:49 PM #186
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05-06-2021, 12:12 PM #187
I spent a week on the East Side last week and had an incredible time despite the meager snowpack.
After skiing the Hulk Tuesday (photos a few posts back), I drove down to June Lake to meet up with Canuck P, a ski bud who is posting up there in April and May after spending the winter living in Revelstoke and skiing Rogers Pass, the fortunate bastard.
Early Wednesday we drove down to Onion Valley Road, knowing full well that reports of conditions from down thataway were dire, but for us Bay Area peeps not getting much chance to ski south of Mammoth Lakes, we wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to go somewhere a little farther flung. Plus we figured the road would be open to the top -- which was correct -- and that coverage seemed to be decent in general on high elevation eastern aspects, so University's East face might work. Or might be terrible, but whatever. You don't know if you don't go right?
We were rewarded with a pretty great day, all things considered. Coverage was generally pretty good and there was minimal dry hiking to get up onto the bench.
Of course the flats were burnt out and there was much talus hopping. Spring sierra skiing 2021 everybody!
But travel in general was pretty easy. What may have been a late drop normally was fine with the day's cool temps and a breeze.
The snow was still a little transitional -- there seemed to have been more in the weekend storm than had been forecasted -- but it was pretty fun skiing. I'm not sure that the chute just north of the peak that we skied is the traditional line, but it was a nice line and the face below the summit seemed burnt, although it was hard to tell.
All in all a pretty great day and better than we could have hoped for given the state of things this year.
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05-06-2021, 12:55 PM #188
After some burgers and beers in Bishop we headed to Pine Creek to post up for the evening with the intention of an alpine start the next morning and an attempt to ski the Feather couloir. Meanwhile, Austrian P was driving up from the peninsula to join in on the fun. He left work at 4 and got to the trailhead after midnight for a 5am wakeup call. The man is a beast.
I didn't have a great sense of how long the approach would take, but AKBruin had warned me not to underestimate its length, which, well if that dude thinks it's long I figured it must be a fucking slog. Feeling a little tired already from the previous two days and not sleeping great I thought the day was a bit of a hail mary, but at least it would be pretty right?
We got going around 6:15 and were pleasantly surprised by the good time we were able to make, even though the distance was as long as expected. We flew up the dry trail and didn't have an inordinate amount of sidehilling on off-camber snow-covered trail at the top. Some of it felt super sketchy to me and I realized that I really need new trailrunners since the tread was mostly gone and I wasn't getting much traction at all. The Ps were completely nonplussed though.
Classic mine shot:
An example of the sidehilling. This photo is mellow but there were sections that were a bit dicey and I wasn't sure I'd be able to avoid falling down the hill if I slipped on the icy morning snow. At one point I was basically crawling up a short steep pitch on hands and knees using my whippet, much to the amusement of Austrian P.
The approach is legit. If you zoom in you can just see the tip of Feather peeking out over the col way in the distance.
A little bit to my surprise though we made great time and were set up to get to the base of the couloir before noon. The east-facing chute between Royce and Feather looked to be in great condition:
The couloir was still not in sight as we worked our way around. Feather Mountain and Royce Lakes sure are stunning:
We felt plenty strong and stoke was high. Shit, were we actually going to get this done?
And then we turned the corner and...[RECORD SCRATCH]
Tons of water ice glistening in the sun in the upper third. Looking through Austrian P's binoculars (the dude drives all night, sleeps a few hours, then does a six-hour approach with all kinds of non-essentials, what a guy) it looked like maybe there was a way to skirt around the rock in between the two huge patches of ice in the crux, and maybe what some of you savages think of as a good time, but not for me thanks! Oh well, at least nobody in the sierra was having lunch in a prettier place than we were:
At this point I was leaning towards just heading on the long journey back to the car, but Austrian P convinced us to climb the other short chute, if not so much for the manky-ass snow as for the views from the top, which would undoubtedly be great. He forged the way through the kind of crappy sidehill approach, and we were just about to put crampons to climb the last couple hundred feet when a few big roller balls came tumbling down in front of us and a tiny wet slide splooged out right above us. Sigh.
Some very manky turns were made and we successfully kept our ligaments and boots in place as the snow grabbed our bases. At least the setting was amazing.
Sarcastically celebrating our exit from Feather:
There was actually some kind of fun wiggling on the way out, and getting back was uneventful and relatively painless. We were drinking beers by just after 5 and wrapping our heads around how amazing a day it was despite what felt like basically zero real skiing. I'm looking forward to heading back without skis this summer, and then getting Feather in a better year in the future.
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05-06-2021, 03:22 PM #189
After a day off Thursday in June Lake that included lunchtime beers and Hawaiian food, dinner-time beers and June pie, a little bit of work and a bunch of packing scattered in between, we set off early Friday back down south to Rock Creek for a weekend camping trip to Treasure Lakes.
After the Feather Peak approach, it was nice to have a mellow stroll from the Rock Creek pack station (where the gate was closed) to Treasure Lakes, less than 4 miles and 1500' of climbing from the car. Lots of dry hiking on the way in, but from a distance coverage looked solid enough.
On the way in a couple of Portlanders heading out from a week-long stay told us that there was plenty of skiing but that none of the big lines were in, which wasn't that surprising. I was surprised that not even le Petit Griffon went according to them, but I was plenty content to relax a couple of days and hopefully ski some decent corn bowls.
We arrived by lunchtime and scored an impossibly beautiful campsite. Such a great zone. There was even a tiny corner of the lake melted out so we could get water and not have to melt snow.
After having some lunch we decided on a late afternoon ski of the hourglass since it was staring right at us. We thought maybe the snow would be cooked by being in the sun all day, but we were surprised to find some pretty great corn.
After a bunch of transitional and variable snow all week, it was nice to have near-perfect corn and just mindlessly rip a lap. Zooming back to camp:
We dug out a bench and had a sick spot for après beach beers. (In the background notice Austrian P's spiffy cordelette laundry line).
Austrian P decided it would be nice to take an icy bath so he dug out a place for extreme skinny dipping. Us North Americans were too soft so we just kept drinking beers.
Once the sun went down we retired to the mid for a civilized dinner, whiskey and Austrian stone pine schnapps. Canuck P and I were pretty stoked on our palatial digs. I had been worried there wouldn't be enough snow to dig out foot troughs and benches, but there was just barely enough, to the point that we hit dirt right at the bottom of the footwells.
Did I mention that this place was impossibly beautiful?
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05-06-2021, 03:42 PM #190
Day 2 we decided to head up to Cox Col and possibly take a stab at the East Face of Gabb.
Heading up towards the top of the col:
Unfortunately, once we got to the top we found a less-than-inspiring view down into the beautiful Lake Italy Basin. The Gabb chutes (far right) were kinda-sorta-not-really in.
It didn't seem worth it to negotiate the potentially very burned-out, definitely icy west-facing cliff maze lower down the far side of the col just to ski probably worse snow than was directly beneath us, so we bailed and did a couple laps beneath Pipsqueak Spire. The views from the col back to our camp (the tiny dots behind and to the left of the largest of the four Treasure Lakes at the top of the frame) were almost as nice as vice versa.
It was another cool day and there was nice skiing on both runs. It must have been good because we didn't bother to stop and take any pictures.
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05-06-2021, 04:07 PM #191
For our last day we wanted to get out before late afternoon so that Austrian P and I could get home to the Bay Area at a resonable hour. We debated between going back up the hourglass for a morning corn run, or instead packing up camp right away and climbing up Treasure Col to exit via the parallel drainage that would allow for some new sights and probably a lot more time on skis. We decided on the latter, effectively doing the reverse of the loop in the Moynier book, and we were glad we did.
Some very pretty rock on Treasure Peak as we climbed up to the col:
Exiting this way we got to take a look at the lines on Dade and Abbott. Cat Ears was very much not in:
The North couloir and le Petit Griffon on Abbott on the other hand, while certainly not looking great, did not look as bad as the guys on the way in had suggested, and if we had had more time we would have gone and checked them out. Of course, they were still pretty marginal and we definitely aren't super bummed about missing out on them in their current shape.
The skiing on the rest of the way out was surprisingly fun, and we even had a good time stubbornly connecting thin strips of snow with our heavy packs down the last steep bit from Ruby Lake down to Heart Lake, where we transitioned back to shoes. I've come to actually enjoy those weird rocky obstacle courses with dry side-stepping and surgical turns through dry patches and trees. Oh, and the Ruby Wall is super cool, and was rad to take in. Didn't get any cool pics though.
Austrian P, who had the smallest pack but the most gear between the three of us, had an especially hilarious rig for the hike out, particularly after the strap on his ski crampon bag broke so he had to hang them from his hip belt. He took our good-natured ribbing well and I shouldn't make fun of him in public, but I can't resist sharing this:
We were back to the car by 1:30 and reveled in the thick air and warm sunshine as we enjoyed the beers we had stashed in the snow by the car.
After gathering up the rest of our gear from Canuck P's place in June Lake, we made one last stop at the Mo Mart for margaritas and an early dinner before Austrian P and I headed home. This was probably my last Sierra trip of the ski season, and the camping trip was a great way to send it off. The snowpack might leave a lot to be desired this year, but man it was a great season for me, and even this last trip exceeded expectations. It was such an amazing time that we kind of wanted to blow off work, reload with some more food and head right back into another zone to camp and ski a few more days.
Here's to a bigger 21/22 season so we can tick off some bigger objectives!
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05-06-2021, 04:35 PM #192
Golf Clap, well done...
Three fundamentals of every extreme skier, total disregard for personal saftey, amphetamines, and lots and lots of malt liquor......-jack handy
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05-06-2021, 04:53 PM #193Registered User
- Join Date
- Jul 2011
- Posts
- 29
Awesome TR, thanks!
(You think it will still be going in two weeks?)
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05-06-2021, 04:53 PM #194
good shit, indeed.
swing your fucking sword.
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05-06-2021, 04:54 PM #195
Thanks for sharing Jorion! Good on you for making the most of this marginal eastside season
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05-06-2021, 05:16 PM #196Registered User
- Join Date
- Nov 2008
- Posts
- 9,825
OUTSTANDING!!!!
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05-06-2021, 05:24 PM #197
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05-06-2021, 06:20 PM #198
Outstanding work and great TR Jorion! Great way to end your east side season
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05-06-2021, 06:51 PM #199
Eastern Sierra Backcountry Thread 2020-21
Helluva trip!
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05-06-2021, 06:54 PM #200
Awesome photos and TR Jorion. Sounds like a rad trip despite the meager snowpack
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