Mt. Lassen Report: Great Corn and Deep Pond Skimming

by SnowyMonk

After reasoning with Metres that, “skiing is always better than NOT skiing….”  the night before, we found ourselves awake at 4 am tip-toeing ninja like around our family at our camp in Lassen NP.  After heating up some water for soup and tea to get my bowels moving we hopped in my car and drove up to the summit parking lot.  We suited up and soon we were skinning.  After 30 min of skinning we were on the ridge, hiking up the summer trail, then following the boot pack all the way to the summit.  I was shocked to find the phallic radio tower castrated… taking a summit pic with the tower was one of my motivating factors to make it back up here… alas. 

We took in the views of Shasta, scoped out the terrain on the north face down the devastated area, as well as near by Brokeoff Mtn, made small talk with a few folks who eventually caught up to us, and started making our way down.  The snow hadn’t fully refroze overnight so it was slarvy, cream cheese that worked our thighs, but couldn’t stop as it was too much fun to ski.  On the way up, I saw tracks going into the pond and out the other end.  It was still quite cold then, but by the time we made our way down at around 7:30 am it was already starting to get warm and I was ready for a backcountry pond skim.  The pond was glacier blue with a few icebergs floating in the middle.

From where I stood it didn’t look that deep, but after I pointed my skis and fully committed, I could tell that the pond was at least neck deep and it would really suck to swim and retrieve a ski.  I skimmed over a shorter spot the first go, then booted back up to have a go through the middle.  Metres, who had never pond skimmed before did it twice as well and soon we were giggling all the way back to the car.  We were back at camp by 10 am, ready to SUP, canoe, swim, and hang out with family and friends the rest of the day.

Snow is melting fast on Lassen.  And from what I understand you have to either stay on snow or the summer trail as the whole mountain is considered sensitive habitat.  The north face down to the devastated area looked fun, but you should start from the summit lot, climb the south face, down the north face, boot/skin back up, then ski back to the car.  A lot of the terrain we skied felt like it was only a foot or so deep… there were rocks sticking out, etc.  There’ll be patch skiing in the surroundings for a while, but if you want to ski from the summit down to the car, you probably only have a week or two left.