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Paging any S Tahoe/Carson Pass Locals/Travelers -

I'm planning to get out to Carson Pass tomorrow with a couple first timers. Checking the weather info I can gather online it looks like things may not have frozen last night along with possible T-Storms and another potential no-freeze tonight. Can anyone confirm any of this? Would hate to make the Bay Area haul for a bust...

Thanks,
JC

Regarding overnight temps, I don't think it has hit 32 for a couple nights in most places. That said many open slopes are experiencing at least a shallow refreeze

North facing slopes I found myself on today, were firm around 11am. Some south facing stuff was super soft at 8:30am.

Heads up, cornices are starting to weaken and tumble. One of the bigger ones on Echo/Angora Bowl has gone down.

Coverage is still great up high.

If anyone's interested, Fallen Leaf road is open all the way to Glen Alpine Springs parking area.

Went up to (where else) the Dana Plateau last weekend, during yet another "plateau-cherry-popping" mission - this one for scwalbster. Special guest appearance from BGnight on Sunday, because he really wanted to climb up Powerhouse again. We climbed Powerhouse both days. It's holding up well, though pretty much every chute in that drainage was tracked by the end. Can still ride to within a 2-minute walk to the car. V-bowl is getting burnt. Coke/Ripper/3rd Pillar chutes cirques still holding good snow. Liberty even looked good. Some of the cornice broke off and actually smoothed things out to the point where it looked rideable from the end of the rap point (I retrieved my rap anchor though, so bring your own... ). The snow there was super wet though and the cornice was huge and... breakable. On Sunday we climbed Powerhouse again, and went across the plateau, down into Glacier Canyon, and up the shoulder of Dana, to "Unknown" chute, which was very nicely filled in and pretty awesome. Cool to get in it untracked... mainly because the road wasn't open. And yes it sucks getting up there when the road isn't open. Got a nice view of the road, which is totally clear up there. Dunno why it's not open yet. Lots of coverage up high. With the cold temps now keeping things in check, it should still be good up there for a while. Cornice fall is going to be a real issue when the temps warm back up, there are some huge ones up there.

Here are some pics; someday I'll get around to a proper TR.

Climbing



Schwalbster surveys the scenery on top of the plateau for the first time. Not bad.



Solstice



Unknown



Third Pillar



Liberty





Powerhouse fin



"Bermuda Triangle" (according to JayTe)



Sunday, climbing again. Is that a track up there in Bermuda Triangle?





Riding into the "unknown"...



Conness and North Peak looking very fat. Hwy 120 looking very clear.



View west off the shoulder of Dana



Don't climb on the edge of the frickin' huge cornices. (J/K... optical illusion. He's not really on the cornice, it just looks like it in the pic.)



Unknown. Filled in differently at the top this year. You can ride it straight from the top, but the entrance hallway will probably melt out soon.





Glacier canyon



Schwalbster in a familiar spot





After riding that diagonal line above my head... stoked!



WTF? Saw this parked in Gardnerville on the way home. Pretty sure they were heading to the Mo-Mart...

Wow, will Mayuary ever end? It's been snowing pretty good.

Here's the south face of Dunderberg


And late may pow on Sunday!

Back to - you guessed it! - Dana Plateau again for Memorial Day weekend. On Sat went to Squaw for some lift-served so that my girlfriend Nicole could get used to her new AT setup (1/2 off demo gear at Mammoth Mountaineering!). Liketoride made a guest appearance, and we had some fun turns in super heavy wet snow. Then down to Tioga, where the road was open to the gate, and we met up with Larry and jbaysurfer, who was also itching to pop his plateau cherry. Sounded like Sat was the day to be out there; we heard tales of powder in Dana couloir, and porn in Powerhouse. But we still found some goods on Sun/Mon.

V-bowl is getting burnt. Pretty much done. Though I did talk to one guy who rode Coke chute on Sat, and rode a good portion of the way down next to v-bowl in the trees; he said the hike out wasn't too bad.



Powerhouse still goes all the way.



Ellery is in great shape!



Tons of people heading up Dana on Sun (at least 10 in this pic alone). Most of them either turned around by Solstice and rode back down the corn on the west-facing approach slopes, or went to the summit and continued to Dana couloir, which looked awesome. No ice this year! There were a few tracks in Solstice too; not sure what the entrance situation is like. Certainly there's a huge cornice there.



Instead, we headed over to Unknown chute, which was closer, and untracked. This was Nicole's first eastside backcountry run. She even says she still likes me.





Jbay:



Jbay stoked. Nicole tired.



Up to the plateau.



Liberty snow cave. Unknown visible at the top middle right.



Down and out Ellery, catching it on the refreeze.



Monday it was a bit colder and windy, and we opted for a late start and short tour - Ellery fit the bill. Here's Larry celebrating his 62nd birthday by climbing and riding Ellery bowl. He said after he got back he was going to sign up for social security. Cool clouds out that day.





He and Nicole rode the bowl back to the car in nice corn. Jbay and I went searching for some chutes. Chute Out looked nice, but it had a track in it.



So we went over to what I think is called S couloir, and it was untracked. Great porn, becoming corn down low. Jbay got this shot w/my camera of me dropping in. I wish I had kept the camera and gotten a shot of him about halfway down, cuz there's a nice Powerhouse-fin-like spot in there. Next time.



Pretty damn good conditions for Memorial Day weekend! Weather hasn't looked so great since though... pretty much straight to summer!

A little late, but here are some pics from a trip to Saddlebag a couple weeks ago. I headed out there with my girlfriend Nicole, for her 2nd eastside backcountry trip. I had heard that the road to Saddlebag was clear but gated, so somehow I got it in my head that it would be a good idea to head up there with the bikes and boards. I was hoping that we might even be able to bike around the far side of the lake, but the path had several large snow drifts still on it (technically I'm now not even sure if biking that path is legal). So we got to do the usual traverse through the suncups from hell, which Nicole was really stoked to experience.

(Sounds like last weekend would have been the primo time to get out there, with the road and boat taxi opening... oh well.)

Some pics:

Plateau: done.



Powerhouse: done.



Ellery: pretty much done.



Dana couloir still looks filled in, but lots of dry hiking to get there.



False White still looking good. Nicole would like to point out that we should have just gone there. (Based on other more recent posts, I choose to believe it looked better than it was, and hence I was not completely stupid to head back to Conness...)



The ride up the road wasn't too bad.



Nice views too.



Backside route up to Conness still filled in at the top.



Still a decent amount of ice on the lake.



Time to start hiking.



Skinning was mostly continuous, with a few dry patches.



The rest was Suncups From Hell (tm).





We climbed up to the right of the waterfall.



Finally arriving at the promised land.



Unfortunately, Nicole was done at this point. Doh!



I climbed up to get in a quick run. Snow finally got better up here. Snow finger looking good.



S couloir:



Doesn't go from the top:



Backside of North peak looking good. Some ttipsters had just made some nice turns up there.



I climbed up to the notch. Was thinking about dropping into S couloir from above, but didn't feel like dealing with a downclimb around the rock. I must be getting soft in my old age. View from above the S:



The snow was soft and super heavy by the time I headed down the snow finger. Still fun, but not exactly a great payoff to work ratio. Even worse for Nicole, who got to make about 5 turns on super suncupped snow on the way back to the super-fun traverse...



... where we got to play in more suncups!



I say, Got Suncups??



OK. The one good thing about the trip was that when we finally got back to the dam, it was SOOOO nice to just get on the bike and coast 10 minutes down the road, instead adding the insult of hiking another 2 miles down the damn thing.



After dinner and dessert at the Mo-mart, all Type 2 suffering was forgotten.



Nicole had never been to the hot springs by Mammoth, so we camped out there and had them to ourselves in the morning. Well, us and the cows. Nothing to get your morning started right like yoga and natural hot springs with killer eastside views, accompanied by cows humping!

Nice jimw! Those are some serious suncups!

Love the bike approach shots!

Hi Everybody

Did anybody recently go to the Waterhouse Peak/ Luther Pass region?
Since the avalanche center is closed for the season, it could be nice for us to share some infos.
I'm concerned about the recent snow (wind loading, wind slabs, how did the snow bind to the snowpack).
Thanks a lot guys!

FaceNord -
Was out on the west shore today. Everything was stable and powdery in the morning but loosened up quite a bit after 10 due to heat, most turns on the lower 1000' was sending large rollers and/or small surface slabs down to the old snow surface. Didn't notice any wind loading.
Currently plan to go to Waterhouse tomorrow morning, I'll try to check back in and let you know how it was.

Hi Wavy

Nice! Thanks for the news.
Hope you're having fun!