Report from March 16, 2024

On Saturday, we went for some sunny chutes on the first warm day after our small storm last week and our big northeast wind event.

We might have been a couple days early…

It generally takes about 5 melt/freeze cycles to make good corn snow.

We’d only given it one day or maybe less…

It was brutally hot on the hike up.

We made it to the top of the chute in about 1.5 hours.

The chute we chose to ski has 5 options at the top.

I’ve skied 4 of the options with only one left to probe.

Knowing the snow was gonna be hot and messy, I hesitated.

Then Garrett said he was down for it so I joined in.

Garrett went first the snow was cooked.

Fortunately for me, he cleared a lot of the mushy snow out of the chute.

He created a large sluff that ran the full length of the upper chute.

I dropped in and the snow was sticky, icy, hooky, sloppy, and weird.

It was the kinda snow that wanted you to fall.

I had no idea how steep the chute was.

I assumed it would be normal but it was about 45º steep and was a no fall zone as we were above a cliff.

Gnarly.

I turned on my best Chamonix jump turn style and hacked my way down.

It was tricky and I was stoked to be at the bottom.

The rest of the chute was sticky and weird and we all survived.

We had plans for a second lap but after the weird snow, we headed home.

I ended up at Palisades Tahoe for the afternoon and it was damn fun.

Thanks, California!