Backcountry
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Back in mid-May, the ski season refused to die in California despite the existence of an unprecedented drought…so the snow soldiers rolled on!
The mountain highway passes (89, 4, 108, & 120) all opened in April because of the lack of snow. As a frequent ski tourer of said passes, the usual plan of attack is to get there right when they open as snow conditions generally deteriorate quickly after opening. However, after a few decent 12 inch storms in early May, the passes played an open & shut game.
The cards finally aligned on May 12th for Jamie Blair (from GNAR the movie fame) and I to spend a day touring to the Y Couloir off Leavitt Peak via Sonora Pass. Our main issue was the wind…as it was insane and probably sustained at 80mph on the exposed ridges. With a few moments of almost ‘turning around,’ we went for it and made it to the summit of Leavitt Peak in around 3 hours.
Given the wind, we knew the snow conditions would suck…and they pretty much did. The Y Couloir was a mix between frozen old snow, firm wind-packed new snow, and some softening in the sunny aspects at 1pm. Ideally a later descent would have yielded much better results. Only the lower slopes down to the car were perfect corn at 2pm…which of course we milked and had a great time doing so.
..oh and the pass has been shut almost non-stop since May 22nd due to new snow. Is there another visit in order? Yes, I believe so…stayed tuned.
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And to think it was nuking snow on this road the day prior…
No Name Peak warming up to morning sun…
Our intended destination is Leavitt Peak on the left…
The winds in exposed areas were mind-blowing. Here, Jamie Blair performs his signature aerodynamic skinning form…
Thankfully, we were protected from the wind skinning up Leavitt Bowl…
After a few hours, we were able to skin all the way to the summit …
Hard to beat the views up here…
Given the recent snowfall, the Sierra was finally looking like winter…
As Mr. Blair scoped his line off the Y Couloir, he discovered that the wind scoured the upper portion to near death-ice conditions…
After navigating the upper portion safely, he slowly opened up his turns…
Jamie then yelled up and told me to take another entrance to hopefully find more suitable snow conditions…and, of course, I value his opinion.
On my upper section, I found some firm wintery snow but failed to take my boots out of ‘walk mode’…great job dude!
After ‘locking’ my boots, I grabbed a shot of this skier slaying a turn…
I followed his lead…unfortunately the wind was keeping the snow temps low enough to make our descent less than ideal…oh well.
If we had the luxury to wait another hour, I’m betting the snow would have been perfection…
Jamie’s middle name is ‘variable conditions’…
Initially, we had plans to ski a total of two different peaks up high followed by an exit to the hairpin at Highway 108. However, given the conditions, we decided to make our northerly descent to the car a little bit sooner.
Our line off Leavitt Peak…
And the lower elevation made all the difference…
Hello there, I think we found a zone to visit next time…
As we continued to stay left on our descent, we were greeted by some glorious corn…
On our last line to the hairpin, we scored some carvetastically good produce…
Here, a skier enjoys his last tuns after a long day…
Being too tired to find a dry crossing, we gave up and straightlined to the awaiting vehicle…
Mandatory ski track looking back parting shot…
Now that’s a solid day in the Sierra…
…until next time Sonora Pass
Looks awesome!
The couloir left of the big rock/highest point in the mystery chutes picture is fantastic…seems to have the right exposure for good corn….no clue on a name though.
The X Couloir, far lookers right on the Mystery Chutes, is even better. So many options up there!