Days 0 & 0
After the ski season ended and our employee party wrapped up I woke up, finished some packing and hopped in my car heading west to Shasta where I would meet up with my buddy Dan to ski Shasta and spend the next ~2 weeks climbing and skiing volcanoes, working north weather permitting. After driving for 9 or so hours through Colorado and into Utah, I barely crossed into Nevada and slept just outside of Great Basin NP at a cool little free campsite where I woke up to the N face of Wheeler Peak. I hopped back in my car and continued driving. In Ely I got to stay on Highway 50. Out of the many times I have driven between California and Colorado, I had not driven this section of Highway 50, instead taking highway 6 to Tonopah. Driving this highway made me think of my Grandma who had spent years of her life crossing the nation by vehicle, and we had specifically talked about this section of highway. This section of highway has the shoe tree, a big cottonwood littered with hundreds of pairs of shoes from all sorts of travelers driving ‘The Loneliest Highway.’ Not found in travel books, I found a MASSIVE mining dump track with no one around. I got to play around on it for a few minutes and take some photos. Wheels taller than me, it absolutely dwarfed my tiny car when I parked next to it. I eventually pulled into Reno where I had the opportunity to pick up a headlamp as I had left both mine back at home- DOH! Driving across Western Colorado, all of Utah, and all of Nevada Reno was the largest city I would be in for the next 2 weeks. After picking up some groceries I raced up to the Shasta parking lot to meet up with Dan and plan for the next day on Shasta.
Day 1- Mt Shasta
We woke up around 3am to blast off via the standard route, avalanche gully, up Shasta. We skinned in the dark for what felt like only an hour or two before enough pre-dawn light let us turn our headlamps off as we approached the consistent treeline. We meandered around different gullies but as my friend told me who had just done it “Yeah you kinda just leave the parking lot, get in the main gully and just go up…..it doesn’t require much navigation at all.” And he was right, all day it was pretty obvious how to continue going up. We took a small break around Lake Helen and listened to some more novice mountaineers freeze while waiting for the slow packer-uppers to get moving. Vibes were good, Dan is a goofy guy and it made the vert light work. We switched to boot crampons and tossed skis on our back maybe 1/3rd of the way up the actual avalanche gulch. We booted through the red rock band and found some wind up higher. We transitioned back to skins through misery hill where the wind really picked up. On top of misery hill (“I don’t know why they call it misery hill, i’m kind of having fun” -Dan would say for the rest of the trip) we should of left our skis but we booted on, almost getting blown off a few times with the skis in an A-frame on our backs. We sumitted the final head wall amongst rime and ice blocks, took some photos, and then scampered off- a respite from the wind was downhill! I put my skis on and side stepped down a stupid little chute and found terrible skiing until about misery hill where it wasn’t good but at least better. Unfortunately the avalanche gulch was pretty hooky/grabby punchy wind crust so lots of our vert was poor skiing. At Helen Lake we stopped for a snack and to hang out in the sun and found great skiing below all the way to our car. I feel like Shasta is known for its great corn, but unfortunately not for us.
Back at the car we started discussing weather and future plans. The forecast was calling for 2-3ft for the Cascade Volcanoes so we made the tough decision to head south, skiing Lassen enroute to the Sierra.
Day 2- Lassen Peak
Rolling into the Devastated Area parking lot we found some other skiers hyped on conditions, they had apparently been bouncing between Lassen and Shasta skiing good conditions and let us know that Lassen is “The place to be!” We looked up at Lassen’s NE face and set a time to wake up.The snow started immediately after the closure gate and we were able to skin about 1/3rd of the way up the face proper. Way better conditions than 2 years ago when I had skied it for the first time. We booted the top 2/3rd of the face and dropped in pretty quickly to harvest that good corn. I had done something wrong clicking in and immediately ate it on the 50 degree headwall, I came out of both skis right as a cloud rolled in and one ski went rocketing down into the ether. Bummer…I started descending on my other ski and eventually saw that my lost ski had stopped only a couple hundred feet below me. I was able to get it on and ski most of the vert out. The snow was a little past-ripe and heavier than preferred but still good skiing. We were able to ski to the closure gate 100ft from our cars and the last little bit was a fun pump track. After a quick climb and ski we had some time to try and bathe (I couldn’t get in the cold water) and stop by the subway caves just outside of Old Station. We took the next day off, having done 11k feet of vert in 2 days.
Day 3- Kirkwood
Still a bit tired from a good effort already we decided to go to Kirkwood and ski some inbounds terrain after they had closed for the season while enroute to the Eastern Sierra. Originally we were looking at skiing Roundtop right off the top of Carson Pass but it seemed to melted out. We found good skiing at Kirkwood and a fun time exploring a new-to-us resort, albeit closed. After we got down we met some friendly folks in the parking lot who also did some touring and we hung out for a few hours chatting and drinking beer.
Day 4- Sonora Pass
We had heard that Sonora Pass just opened so we figured it was worth a stop as we heading south. The only info online we could find was about Leavitt Peak’s Y-couloir. We figured, sure let’s ski that first and see what else is there. We were able to meet up with a friend, David, who was in the Mammoth Area and willing to drive up to ski with us. Using a car shuttle we started along the PCT heading south, skinning and walking along a ridge before getting a few turns in approaching the base of Y-couloir. On the final approach we saw a ton of other skiers, the place to be! At the top of Leavitt we met a friendly local who shared some additional beta. While waiting for the Y to soften we dropped into a West facing bowl for some soft corn snow. We then climbed out and found the Y still pretty frozen but it was time to drop in. On the way out we were able to ski some great chutes per our new beta with one more climb up to get ~1700ft of skiing in. In all we got 4 ski lines, 3 of which were in great condition!
Day 5- Sonora (again!)
David had to leave so it was just Dan and I again and with the great coverage we decided to spend another day on Sonora Pass. We dropped a car at the exit again and hiked in the now familiar approach. We summitted Leavitt again but decided to ski a narrower ‘hallway’ just west of the main Y-couloir. Once again, not soft snow but that was alright we had a couple more chutes to ski. We hiked back up and dropped towards Deadman’s Lake off Leavitt West Peak then traversed around and climbed a cool hanging snowfield. It was Dan’s first real snow climb and had a spicy ~150ft cliff at the bottom -can’t fall there! We were able to drop off the backside into a real cool chute and from there skated, poled, and skied out way back to the car. Another full day of skiing connecting multiple chutes together.
Day 6- Virginia Lakes
It turns out David was able to join us again and we were heading south to the Eastern Sierra. We decided on the Southeast Gully of Dunderberg Peak. It was a pretty straightforward climb and ski. Boots on at the car, 0.5mi of hiking through sagebrush before arriving at the car. A 2,200ft ski line lay above us so we booted on up and skied on down. The snow was soft and the skiing great. It was a leg burner skiing top to bottom without stopping.
Day 7- Kidney Chute
We had been eyeing Kidney Chute which reaches to the Dana Plateau above Gibbs and Kidney Lake for a few days and decided to go for it. It was a bit of a haul in, packs are much heavier with skis and ski boots on our backs. We traversed around the lake (it might be time for me to get ski crampons) and found a ton of wind at Gibbs Lake. Crossing boulder fields with ski boots on my feet and skis on my back was an exciting balance challenge. We climbed it, found even more wind at the top, and skied down in good conditions. A long hike out but Mammoth Lakes was the plan and a hot tub was on our horizon.
Day 8- Mammoth Mountain
We skied at Mammoth mountain, a much appreciated day out of touring boots. Chairlifts are amazing, you don’t need to hike! We had fun skiing around in the soft spring snow. We skied some of the wiggles around the mountain and enjoyed a few laps off the summit via gondola and chair 23.
Day 9- Piute Ridge
At this point I was getting pretty tired and the idea of long approaches was not so appealing. David and I chose to check out the north facing chutes off Piute Ridge near North Lake up near Sabrina Lake. We camped down low in Bishop and met up in the morning. The line we chose to ski was a bit of a punchy post-holing climb and terminated in a huge chockstone mid-chute. Underneath the chockstone was a large cave we climbed into and hung out in. Skiing was alright but I was getting pretty tired.
Day 10- Gilbert N. Couloir
Gilbert’s N. Couloir near Bishop Pass was on the agenda. As we got closer to see it, we could see a large choke point with exposed rocks. Additionally we were finding some punchy snow conditions, so Dan and I decided we did not want to ski it. David was eager to so we watched him ascend most of it before we heading over to check out a different line. Dan and I skied what I believe is ‘Huntington Couloir’ on Mt Thompson. By the time we made it back David had finished climbing and was done skiing down. The approach was a bear but luckily we found a better descent route that let us ski a bit more than we could on the way up. The bootpack up the short couloir wore me out and I decided I was pretty burned out on skiing. I figured it was a good day to call it so I headed home with a quick detour through Death Valley.
Summary
All in all we had a great trip. Tons of skiing, mostly good snow. A very pleasant ‘Plan-B’ to our original plans. We found the guide book on Eastern Sierra skiing to be amazing for planning and stoking us up. In addition to the skiing we had a great time being goofy and we all got a long very well. I also enjoyed exploring, mapping, and future trip planning as I will certainly need to come back to the Sierra for more skiing in future springs.
Samuel D. Parks 