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Professional skier and Tahoe local Josh Daiek and snowboarder Abe Greenspan took some time last December to complete what Josh has dubbed the “Tahoe Ten”: 10,000 vertical of hiking over five peaks on a 20 mile route. They also skied five epic lines off aforementioned peaks, and even if you could keep the pace during the hike, you won’t be shredding harder than these guys. Luckily for us, they put together a fun video documenting the experience and the lines they skied.
Starting from Kirkwood, the two were able to summit and descend five mountains:
- Thimble Peak (9,805 feet)
- Emigrant Peak (9,795 feet)
- Round Top (10,381 feet)
- Red Lake Peak (10,063 feet)
- Stevens Peak (10,059 feet).
They finished in Hope Valley. This monster hike took 12.5 hours – not too shabby, considering – and some of it was done at night, as the winter solstice was nigh.
Daiek and Greenspan were the first to complete this particular route, but that wasn’t important:
It’s funny. For me it’s never really been about being the first or trying to set records. I just like the idea of saying, ‘How far can we go?’ That’s how the ‘Tahoe Ten’ project started, Abe and I wanted to link a bunch of peaks together and see how far we could make it in a day.
– Josh Daiek
The hardest objective of the trip? Crescent Moon Couloir:
[The couloir] has a steep, exposed entrance. A fall here would most likely be fatal. Your first 10 turns are on a 45- to 50-degree slope in a certain ‘you fall you die’ type of zone. This wouldn’t bother me too much except for the fact that the snow was variable with patches of boiler plate ice and hidden sharks under the thin snow cover.
– Josh Daiek
In total these boys ascended only 9,901 vertical feet, but nobody is holding it against them. Contrived by the duo last spring, this was the second Tahoe Ten, and they are “sure we will come up with something rad” for a third.
