I've realized after being around here a bit that a lot of people new to the forum are either introduced by someone or introduce themselves. It's only occurred to me after a year or so of posting here, that I neglected to ever introduce myself. So this little TR is a sort of belated introduction.

California alpine season is approaching and I did a bit of a tune-up/first time to ever ski in August type outing today. Yeah, sorry, no rock climbing. Not this time.

So my gf is hosting some raucous bachlorette party this weekend on the north shore, so I'm left somewhat partner-less. I think I caught this weird summer skiing bug a few weeks ago at Shasta and have decided this might be the year I try to ski in each month. I apologize for bringing skiing in here. I've been a skier all my life and have climbed for about 6 years or so. I like rock climbing, but I think my true love is the snow and ice found in the alpine. I learned to climb in Alaska and the rock season there is short, but ice and ski season is very long. I think that's where my preferences come from.

Anyways, I saw some pictures from the Roundtop area this week and there appeared to be a ton of snow up there. I've also been itching to get up Crescent Couloir. I packed accordingly and got a not so alpine start, reaching the TH at 11.

It takes only an hour or so to get to the snow near Winnemucca Lake.
I found a good spot to change over from tennis shoes and notice something on the snow.... I was initially thinking, sweet, bootie! But then I realized it was only a hat or something. Upon closer inspection, this hat appeared to have blood on it (yuck).

Even worse yet, as I investigate the site a bit more, there appears to be some "claw" marks or something on the snow above the hat and they look out of place and don't look all that old...

It's weirdo reminders like this that make me happy I had some climbing mentors in the past and learned that trying to climb a steep gully full of hardened, slippery snow in tennis shoes without an axe is kind of a bad idea. Hope the guy/gal is okay.

After putting on the absolute slipperiest pieces of nylon clothing I own (this was NOT done on purpose!) I headed up.
The snow was perfect. I can't recall a single insecure front point or axe plant.
All of the pictures I took looking up were ruined by the sun, so here's one looking down.

I saw while walking in that the gully looked like it had a melted out section near the top. But, once I realized how great the snow was, there was little chance I wasn't going to at least check it out.

Since my middle name is downclimb, I determined that if it didn't go I would just downclimb the thing. As I continued up and more and more sections of the route were exposed, the conditions held, sometimes getting a tad steeper, or a bit narrower, or the preferred route would get really close to these huge moats!

I was thinking it was going to go and even if it didn't, I was noticing the rock in many places was easy enough to scramble by, even in telemark boots.
Eventually though, I came to this.

I didn't have to look at it too long. There were considerable gaps between the snow I was on and the rock and of course the rock was devoid of any features that would make climbing the short 15' between snow patches possible.
No belay, in tele boots? No bueno. Downclimbing commenced.

Downclimbing can be meditative, for me at least. I find myself getting into downclimbing trances. This can be good because downclimbing long snow routes pretty much sucks so the time can pass and you don't notice it so much when you're lost in some sort of repetative motion induced trance. Just make sure you don't downclimb right into one of those huge gaps.

The climb was actually a lot of fun despite the less preferred method of descending that was required.

Of course there was still the skiing yet to come! I did after all haul those things up here, might as well use 'em.

I skied probably ~800' vertical and I won't lie to you... it wasn't awesome. The top 2/3 involved a lot of finding the smoothest part of the heavily runneled and sun cupped snow with an occasional pleasant knee-dropping turn thrown in. The bottom 1/3 was pretty smooth and soft and totally made the entire effort worth it!

A B & C show the line of descent. Not too bad for August!!

The walk out was fun. Almost everyone wanted to know where the freakshow with the skis on his back had been, and fortunately I had the tracks to point to!!