Warmer storms hitting Tahoe right now Big. Powder may be present but it is likely way up high. (anyone at Tahoe now to confirm?) Cold air and more snow (powder?) after Friday and into the weekend. I'll be headed up for some backcountry powder on Monday before the warm California sun turns it to mash. (this takes about 1 hour of sun this time of year!)
This was from an amazing trip where we had excellent stabilty and were able to frequent the Kicking Horse area backcountry. The knife edge ridges there are typically wind blown making for easy hiking or skinning.
No snow. Warmer temps for the last few days with rain and more rain. I live at 6700' so it may be snowing higher, but today over the summit it was all rain.
I went to Mammoth in 2004 when you guys were getting crazy snow down there at the time and we didn't get squat. When we reached bishop the road was closed but there wasn't any highway patrol there so we chained up my buddies silverado and kept on truckin over the pass.
We could barely see, and were following the tracks of another vehicle that had decided to chance it. Both me and my buddy johnny were yelling at my buddy russ, "LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, KEEP IT IN THE CENTER!" He turns around after a couple minutes of this and yells "SHUT THE F$$K up!!"
We passed a Mammoth Lakes Sherriff, in a suv and later learned that he was going to bishop to enforce the closure because none of the Bishop squad cars had winter tires and there was a foot of snow on the ground.
We also learned the next day that there was a HUGE avalanche that buried the highway and we were lucky that we had gone through early.
We parked in the parking lot at one of the lodges and by the time we woke up the next day we could barley open the camper door. There was five feet of fresh in the parking lot.
The mountain was reporting 60" that day and they didn't get the alpine open, because it was super windy and puking, but that didn't matter because the runs were amazing. You could do the same run all day and it would still be fresh. The snow was super wind compacted and super spongey, and we didn't sink in it as much as we thought we would coming from the wet coast of BC. I've never experienced something like that back home. we have wind packed snow, but not like that.
That night we checked out town, made friends with some locals and scored some very expensive crappy party supplies :) We went to bed under the stars and the next day promised to be bluebird......
YA BUD! Praise be to ULLR indeed. He hath given generously lately. Monday was sick, Khb's was EPIC that day! Any Californians longing to ride some real pow should think about a little ROADTRIP!!!
Edit: Not that we don't get rain too..
Ryan D- Sick Vid too.. ever thought about trying to hold it behind you? would be difficult i know, or done any closup follow cam of your buds?
Thanks! That was my first time riding with the pole cam & i only did about 3 laps so a bit of an experiment for sure. I'd love to do a follow cam with it but on a day like that it's tough to want to follow anyone!! Ps did u guys hike khb's that day? That was the day red & green were closed until about 2 pm, would have been a worthy walk for sure! We hiked up 86 for awhile & i tried to convince my friends to go all the way to $1,000,000 but nobody was down, still epic everywhere else anyways! Def made about a dozen sacrifices to Ullr that day.......
Dude so many days lately.. Guess they're all starting to blur together..
Good thing I have a camera!
Monday
Tuesday
Wendsday
My buddy Kev put this together that day too Pow Pow
edit no way to embed vimeo yet. bug chris mac
Hear ya about following someone. At somepoint it becomes more about the video than the pow if you take it too far. But the video's sure look good later.
And then at the end of the day we broke up to the back of the next peak and I dropped into a gully on my sled. As soon as I did my first turn to the left I saw the windslab break. I looked down and saw a staunch wall starting to form. (A staunch wall is where the slab slides up and over the one underneath it.)
I wanted try and get away from most of the snow mass so I pinned it to the left. When I hit the staunch wall it sent me in the air and I landed on my tail on a left leaning slope, which sent me sideways and ejected me from the snowmobile.
I landed facing down and had a few seconds to think "OH F*&K!" before the wall of snow hit. It tumbled me forward and all I could see was white. I was like being in a snow washing machine. I continued the momentum of my spin and I think that helped me end up on top. When everything stopped I stuck my hand up in the air to let my buddy who was watching in horror know that I was ok.
Avalanche!
I managed to self extract and set to trudging the ten feet up to my snowmobile. It was like tunnelling. Each step I would sink up to my waist or deeper and then I would sink again with the next step.
When I finally made it up there my kill switch was broken, but my sled was only partially buried upside down. Pat asked if i was going to need help and I said yes so he skidded down the slide path and hit the staunch wall at mach shnell, but it was soft and absorbed most of his speed.
We got the sled running after we figured out that the kill switch wires needed to be apart.
I got too excited yesterday, and ignored the obvious signs of wind loading. I certainly won't make that mistake again.
Let us know!