Devil's Peak from the devil's outlook. This compelling peak is actually on private property - leased to Royal Gorge for the ski season.
Lunch break on the trail. Warm day - in the 50's with a strong radiant sun and almost no wind. Snow was corning up and we had a great tour.
Ross doing some snow sampling by the side of the trail near a bend. The trail went right, and he went straight, over the snowbank and this is the result.
Stage coach trail - small skiers and big trees.
The trail climbs immediately from the highway, and does not relent until the summit is reached.
We go up, and up and up. One kick turn after another. Luckily, for most of the way, someone else had broken trail and set a skin track. Unfortunately for us, the skin track was steep and unrelenting.
Beautiful trees dot the mountainside as we climb up. They are widely spaced, and their size is a testament to the snow security of the up-track.
Rubicon Peak above the meadow. We skied left and up to Jakes (out of photo). One can ski the ridge between Rubicon and Jakes, or either one as a separate tour.
View of Heavenly ski resort from the summit of Jakes.
View from the summit looking across Lake Tahoe towards Mt. Rose in the NE corner of the Lake.
Jeff and David on the summit of Jakes.
Mt. Tallac from the summit - look for the great ski lines in the summit snow field. Someone beat us to it. Next week, look for updates here as this is our next planned destination.
Dick's Peak from the summit - another destination planned for another day.
View from just below the summit before we jump off for the decent.
Jeff carving light powder - with any choice for a line - this mountain has a 1,000 ways down.
Let's see - what do you suppose happened here?
Can you find the skier in this picture ? Every pitch we stopped, and admired the incredible view.
Jeff squirts by, not wanting to stop for a portrait. How often does Sierra snow do that?
The forest on the way down
Emerald Bay with tour boat departing. Mt. Rose in the distance beyond Lake Tahoe.
Here is a Google Earth overlay of the summer terrain and our approximate si route for the day. The orange line is our approximate route.
Jeff leaps to the business at hand, spying a great line down the ridge side between "tufa" like outcroppings and ice encrusted trees.
From the ridge, looking west, here is Mt. Lincoln, the top of Sugarbowl ski resort - displaying the formidable, and rarely skied PR run on the west face.
The ridge rolls up and down gently once the high point is attained. There are great views, and fun skiing along the undulating folds of the topography.
Ice blasted tree shows the remains of yesterday's storm.
Here is a close-up of another tree -top. This tree is amazing - first it has to withstand the sandblasting experience getting coated with ice by high wind, then, it has to support the ice and rime until the sun's hot rays, warm and melt the ice, or it sublimates and leaves the needles free to perform their normal photsynthesis function.
Hmm - what goes down, must come back up. So, we put the skins back on and hump back up to the ridge top looking for some more fun.
Once again on the ridge, this time looking south to Snow Mountain and the gorge of the American River.
These "tufa" like outcroppings are all over the ridge and surrounding mountaintops. They break the wind and help capture snow which has deposited into the gullies between the tufa ribs. Between the ribs the skiing is great on this springtime corm snow - as long as you remember to turn (quickly) before coming up against the adjacent outcrop.
Can you find Waldo in this picture. What a place. We'll be back (as soon as we explore the other jewels nearby).
Ed, Eva. and Don ski the last little bit to Point Moriah, with Snow Mountain looming in the background. This was the last sunny day before the storm door opened again. Window wells are refilling with spindrift and the snow continues to accumulate!
Maya is very pleased to be out and tromping about in the high Sierra forest. Mt. Lincoln (the top of Sugarbowl Ski Resort) is in the background, with the back side showing (PR run from the summit). We had lunch outside on the snow and enjoyed the view. The warming hut was FULL! and too warm anyways.
When we leave the house at 10:30, the temperature has risen, but the snowbank besides the driveway is still amazing. It will take weeks and weeks to melt all this snow.
at Anna's Pass, we pick up the alignment of the Bogus Basin trail (ungroomed), and followed that to Claim Jumper. This trail had a nice downhill glide, refreshing after our morning of bushwhacking up the ridge. Had fiun with making short videos on the way home.
Decided that since we were getting more house guests, I would dig out the 3rd bedroom's windows which had become buried in the last two storm cycles. Still, not much sunlight will get in here, but at least if there is a fire, the window opens and one can crawl out into the snow well to escape. I dug the snow out a few feet and down to the window sill height.
This is a view from Lyle's Lookout on a previous tour. I'm all duded out in ski patrol garb, as we were at Royal Gorge and I could patrol and have family fun at the same time.
Here is a picture from our last storm. The snow blower has made one pass on the right side of the driveway, but the large lump on the left side is the buried car. I had placed a stick and flag out in front of the bumper the night before, and I'm really glad I did, because, without that flag, I suspect we'd have a subaru with a front end that looks like it was run through a cheese grater. You can imagine how long it took to dig out from this one...
The sky finally cleared, and we were out skiing again. Here is a shot looking north over Deer Lake, with the Royal Gorge Wilderness warming hut in the distance across the frozen lake,
This is a view from Lyle's Lookout, looking south and west towards Snow Peak.
Ed, Eva, and Diane enjoying the brisk morning air on our ski.
The latest storm brings over 36" of fresh snow. As usual, around the house it has drifted much deeper. I suit up, carefully open the kitchen door, and dig my way out and up to allow some light in through the french doors. The bank is now well over my head, so I need to heave the snow up and away over 8 feet. Now,, I have a well dug by the door, I needed to dig stairs into the snow so I could climb out to deall with some of the other windows, and to make a real exit for this doorway.
Diane peers out from the newly excavated door. I only had the energy for one of the doors, and the door sill area beneath the snow pile to keep the slowly melting snow from leaking under the bottom of the door and into the house. I'm standing at the 2nd floor level - now the base snow level around the house outside. I trudge over to the 2nd floor deck off the bedroom, and walk right over the railing to remove snow from in front of that door too.
Here is the 2nd floor deck - the french door obscured by drifting snow. I dig this out along with the front window, then come in to warm up.
