Report from May 10, 2023

Brought to you by Mono County Tourism

4:45am alarm clock.

Blue Danube by Johan Strauss II (because it’s such a beautiful song, it hurts a little less to wake up so early).

We left the house at 5:30 and headed due south for 13,005′ Mt. Morgan, CA.

The roads are still buried in snow here so we didn’t get anywhere by car.

We parked on the valley floor at 7,000′ and started grinding across the incessant sagebrush flats.

13,005′ Mt. Morgan – Nevahbe Ridge Gullies Details

Tall Carl & Owen Leeper have huge strides and kept the pace high from the start.

Trevor and I did all we could to keep up across the plains.

The sun rose and the moon set directly into the ridgeline creating a spectacle.

Large piles of wet avalanche debris littered the flats at distances from the mountain that we found difficult to believe.

The avalanches reportedly occurred during a wet storm in February and the original debris piles were up to 30′ deep…

After the flats, we eased over a small pass that revealed somewhere around 7 separate gullies to choose from.

We continued south until we found a gully free of wet slides.

Then it was up.

Straight up.

Then switchbacks.

68 of them…

We made it quite a way on skins before switching to boot crampons.

At the final headwall, we pulled out ice axes and dug in.

Owen lead and put in a solid booter.

The uppers consisted of a couple of inches of new snow on firm spring snow.

The headwall felt like it took an eternity to ascend.

Once on top, we waited around for about an hour for the snow to soften.

We hoped it would soften…

The views from the summit were dazzling.

Crowley Lake, the White Mountains, Red Slate Peak, Mt. Esha, Mt. Baldwin, Red & White Mountain, more…

Eventually, Owen dropped in and skied well and the snow looked pretty good.

I’m not sure what to call the snow but it was kinda corn and it skied fun.

I’d say the snow in the uppers was:

After the upper chutes, the snow changed to dust on crust and was tricky but the angle was lower making the going smooth enough.

From there it took 16 minutes of continuous skiing to get back to the car.

The heat hit hard at the car.

This might have finally been the first day of spring.

Bring on corn season!

Oh, and we went to Tall Carl’s for chips and beer then took a quick look at Convict Lake on our way home.

This place is magic.

PHOTOS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER