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Memorial Day. I've been wanting to hit this chute for quite awhile. I parked at North Lake hiking the Lamarck Lakes trail in my tennis shoes w/ splitboard, skins, crampons, split crampons, ice axes, etc. on my back. I walked all the way to the coulior in my tennis shoes. Why did I bring a splitboard? Here's a view once I topped out on the terminal moraine above Lamarck Lake


I dumped all my gear at the base and booted up w/ a much lighter pack. There was a dusting of snow from the day before and lots of wet slides from last weeks 4-8 inches of snow. I climbed the chute in sweltering heat which didn't let up until about 2/3 the way up. The snow in the coulior had about 1" to 3" of new snow on top of a 1 1/2" breakable crust layer on top of about 5" to 8" inches of light powder. Under that it was the old, rock hard, frozen corn surface. I thought it might make for some interesting riding. Here's some pics at the top:
Darwin and Mendel:

Badass chute to the right of Mendel:

Cool chute to the southeast of Lamarck:

Looking down my bootpack from top of chute

The top of the chute is pretty mellow with the middle being the steepest. When I first started hiking it I was kind of disappointed that it wasn't as steep as it looked, but when I started riding it my opinion changed. The top 1/3 was fine. It as about 3 inches of snow on top of crust. Past that I started to break through the crust on every turn. This was unnerving at first. I had to be real deliberate on every jump turn making sure my board cleared the surface and that the tail didn't get caught on the crust. Every turn was predictably unpredictable.
Looking up 1/3 down

Looking down to where it rolls over into the steep section

Needless to say, I didn't earn any artistic points for my tracks. I took this cool side chute which was steep and had better looking snow than the main fall line.

8 hrs. car to car. I was beat. Cold Mirror Pond hit the spot.
Looking back on my day

Sweet pics BGnight!

We were out there on Sunday. It was my first time to that area...man is it sick. Thanks for sharing your day and pics with us.

ps. you hiked across the flats down there in tennis shoes?

Yeah . A lot of trail and scrambling. It was easier than putting my skins on at the flats. I did bust out the ice axe going up the moraine kicking steps w/ my sneakers and in one real firm spot chopped a few steps, but for the most part it was an easy walk.

Whatever works.

Sweet! Bummer about the crust, but way to make the most of it. It's a great feeling to get one of those lines that you've been waiting for...

And now that you've posted it, I think this is going to be one of the ones on my list: