Sadly, this was only my second day on my splitboard this season due to this being the worst winter I’ve seen since I moved to the Sierra in ’93 (this also being the worst of the worst last 3 years in a row I’ve seen) . I decided to go to one of my favorite areas for a day trip from Reno. I knew it had snowed a few inches the day before so I hoped to find some good snow up high. I didn’t know what to expect as far as avy concerns up high. I’ve been keeping up on ESAC but the observations are few and far between to go off. I knew I’d play it conservative and dig before I commited to anything steep. Being out of splitting shape and not having my mountain wits tuned in yet, I definitely had some anxiety going solo even though that’s my preferred way to do backcountry.

I arrived to Twin Lakes at the perfect time:

My plan was to go up and tentatively climb and ride “ski dreams” or some lines near it. It’s a great line to start off the Eastside season and makes for a great tour up Horse Creek Canyon. After some of the shittiest skinning conditions (wish I had my ski crampons) You are quickly up in the alpine and rewarded with excellent views. Ski Dreams is the obvious chute on the left:

Once you hit 10k feet there was about 3-6 inches of pow on top of a giveable crust which made for primo riding. Above 11k you started to run into ribs of wind crust and more variable types of snow. But still good. Here I’m just getting out of the death crust and into the pow:

I always take a break in this spot. You have a lot of touring options at this point. The Twin Peaks area is to the left and a there’s bunch of nice lines in the middle I want to hit but never do:

I thought I saw what might have been a crown in ski dreams from way down low. Once I popped over a rise to get the first close view I was taken aback at the carnage I saw:

There were at least a couple big slides here as there were some big debris piles poking up around this last debris field. I really wasn’t sure when this thing went last. Some of the debris looks newer than others and the debris was really soft as you can see by my tracks:

This is usually the exact way I skin into the side of ski dreams to avoid exposure which is funny seeing how it’s exactly where it crowned. Needless to say I was spooked at this point even though the “official” ESAC rating for the day was LOW. I knew not to put any stock in that seeing how it was Considerable less than a week ago. I dug around and did some compression tests just above the crown and could only get a CT25 Q2 96cm down in two different columns. I then isolated a couple columns right into the crown face and got a CT14 Q3 17cm down and CT18 Q2 33cm down. I’m no avy expert and but I’d think a CT18 with a Q2 at that depth was saying “hey asshole, I probably won’t slide, but do you feel lucky?” I really need to get my ass into an Avy II course. I dig pits but sometimes I don’t feel like I know what the hell I’m looking at. Regardless, I didn’t ride anything steep. I was psyched out at this point (I had also just read about the Terminal Cancer incident the night before just to finish off any ambitious thoughts that might be floating around in my head)

The next bowl adjacent to this one showed the same past activity:

Time to ride!:

Since I didn’t want to give people the wrong impression that snowboarders were smart and responsible I dropped this powder filled terrain trap down lower 😉
Kidding aside, I jumped around on it and felt it was stable. The snow down this low had warmed up a lot more than 2k feet higher and was now frozen underneath a nice silky layer of pow. I was still freaked out so decided to bomb it fast and made plans to duck into some crevasses on the canyon wall. I dropped in hot and made 4 turns and glanced back to see that no dragons had awakened and then I proceeded to enjoy the funnest run of the year! 😀 I’d swear God made this gully especially for snowboarding. So fun!!

So stoked! I really wanted to do another lap but the skin track takes a long route around to the top and I was spent.

Another fun zone with some cool gullies in the area. If I would have known I would have just set up a track to do laps between 10-11k where the good were:

Looking back up Horse Creek Canyon:

And I lost one my verts on the way out! 😥