Horse Creek, Eastern Sierra 3-18-16

Drove down to camp at Twin Lakes the night before. Arrived at 9pm and realized I forgot my ski pants. Contemplated for about two minutes touring in jeans all day then got in the truck and drove back to Reno. Slept 4 hours and drove back and started hiking around 7:30. First time I’ve ever forgot an essential piece of equipment. It’s not fun. I will definitely be more diligent in my pre trip checklists from now on.

Really good winter snow up high on the steep faces. Some crust and windboard interspersed on the aprons with some good transitional and corn snow everywhere else.

I had been wanting to hit this chute off the top of ski dreams for awhile now. I decided to tour up the bowl under it and climb the line rather than climb ski dreams like I always do. Nice to experience some new terrain in a familiar place. There are a few entrances that all come together and there were a few ski tracks from the day before in the chute but the chute I rode was untouched and I barely noticed the ski tracks down low where it widens.

Always nice to find the best snow on the steepest part:

I knew I wasn’t riding until after this next coming disturbance this weekend so I wanted to finish myself off and take advantage of the good snow. I ended up doing 6500′ vert this day. I was dragging serious ass hiking the talus up the back side of the Horse Cr peaklet chute.

Next objective:

Different view:

Amazing day. Barely enough snow to get back down to the lake with some mandatory unclicking/unstrapping. There were about 8-10 tracks coming out of the Matterhorn cirque and a pair coming from Twin Peaks. Ran into about 8 snowshoeers with overnight packs on the way out.

Huge fail on the camera angle pointed way too far down. I just got a new gopro after my old one broke 4 years ago: