Headed out to check out a cool shot on the north peaklet of Tallac, and planned on skinning to maggies to return to a dropped car at Eagle Lake trailhead....moved to slow and got shut down but made a pretty goofy video of it.

hope you enjoy.
http://vimeo.com/3775459

mike can you embed video in this forum???

Thanks guys for a great day!
Here's Paul's youtube videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBOp8mVYKYI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmePcZb2S7M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CStKSMiZ6ow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TVTWQz1u_w

Great conditions in the backcountry around Tahoe above 7000' on north and east. South is money corn snow where we have it, in the middle elevations. A few inches of the recent new snow is sliding by noon, but you can push it into small wetslides and then wait a minute before skiing the bed surface. Wet slides can take you into a terrain trap, or cause an injury or lost ski etc.... And there's a difference between wetslides occuring on the surface vs. complete snowpack failure. Both can be really bad. The former can be managed while skiing down. The later is a disaster, but luckily rare. Both are fairly easy to predict in the field.

The snowpack is generally better now than before on Tallac. The walk in from hwy 89...not so better. How about opening the gate for 3 weeks please, so we don't have to walk 2 miles on pavement? I didn't mind when I could at least ski back down it. You can't skin in the woods anymore either. Snow is plenty deep near the dead end where you start skinning however.


What a day today!






North facing terrain up high was great boot deep dry powder. I think we have quality winter snow on north facing terrain above 9000' most anywhere right now. Corn on south, Porn on east. We skied a run down the bowl at 11am and peaked into the south facing chute below, that takes you back under the cross. A little too soft, it would have been good until maybe 10am. So we skinned back up to go over to Cathedral Bowl.






Desolation is really well covered right now. I bet you can drive into fallen leaf lake and skin from the fire station. This is a pretty direct route into the middle of Desolation. Going over Maggies would be good too, with a little dirt in places. Then of course you could go over Tallac to get into Deso too. Going in from 50 would be patchy at the start I assume. I've never gone in from Echo Summit.






Cathedral Entrance got too soft by the time we were there, at about noon. I skied the south facing chute, skiers left of Cathedral Bowl. Great corn snow with plenty of coverage. The other half of our group dropped in on a more east facing line. They are beneath the arrow in this pic. They had to ski cut about 6"of new snow and let it slide before skiing.








Snow down lower was the best






A look back up at the Cross on the East Side

_________________
Mike Schwartz
www.thebackcountry.net
mike@thebackcountry.net

Skied the east side of Mt. Tallac on Thursday 12-17-09. Snow wasn't great, but it's nice to see a healthy snowpack in general. Winds have stripped snow off near ridges and we need another huge dump for sure, but at least we have good depth down low.

_________________
Mike Schwartz
www.thebackcountry.net
mike@thebackcountry.net

Toby and I were lone soldiers on Tallac today. Maybe 8" of new light and dry up high. Made for some slippy skinning over the firm-ish base. Skied the cross in the boniest conditions I've ever done it in. Fun maze of lines that go and lines that don't go required to be navigated to get to the gut of the thing. We blew it and skied all the way down to the big trees and had to wallow back up to the higher entance near the little trees. Cross and apron were good though. Still a bit of a punchy base below the dusting until you reach the lower North facing trees, which were bueno all the way down sweat hill. Needs several more feet to really make the fun stuff worthy. Otherwise just enjoy corkscrew, sun bowl trees, and maybe even cathedral bowl if the sun decides to shine.

Here's a few shots of Tallac at low tide. These are from 12/27, but I bet there is no more snow there today than when I took these...although that should be a different story by next weekend.







This is the easy entry to the cross. Little different at low tide:




We skied to the big trees and found a 25' cliff of rock and snow that would have had to be downclimbed. We wallowed back up to the upper entry - which was filled in.


Elevator Shaft ain't quite ready yet:


Then the batteries died just as the good skiing started.

skied cathedral chutes on fri 5/7/10
heres a little video!
perfect corn and awesome weather.
http://vimeo.com/11579827

tallac is covered pretty well, lots of new snow sliding where wind affected on NE and E. Gonna get 6' of new snow in the next few days up there however. Desolation looks very white already.

_________________
Mike Schwartz
www.thebackcountry.net
mike@thebackcountry.net

...was amazing yesterday. plenty of coverage. saw a skier and boarder hit the central chute on the front side :shock: , several others hit north bowl.

we hit the cross and it was pretty perfect, then corkscrew. only a getting crusty way down low.

some pics

gotta get the lake pic first as we drove to make sure emerald bay was closed.


we watched 2 do the central chute :shock: , i think it included a base grind for the 2nd down


halls looks thin still


eco gets his line with probably the best backdrop around big blue


umm, ok


one track


from blower to butter


corkscrew was all time as well. :thumpsup:

merry splitmas

Great pictures. "eco gets his line with probably the best backdrop around big blue" - where on Tallac is that?

Oh hell yeah!
UCL, thats the other way to get to the Cross aka the normal way to Babycham. Friday was a gorgeous day indeed!!!

April 23, 2011

Finally ticked Babycham off my list. This was only my second day in the backcountry this season. Since becoming a dad in January, I've mostly been focused on trying to get in enough days at Alpine to make my pass pay off. Despite the gloomy weather, the factors lined up today: deep spring snowpack, stable snow with a "low" avy advisory (actuallly more on that later), a few inches of new (wet) snow, and me in Tahoe ready to ski. Yesterday I sampled some of the steep east/north facing shots at the resort, and deemed the conditions good.

I arrived at Spring Creek Road just before 10, and two guys were already returning to their car. Seems that they didn't make it to the top, as they "couldn't find the trail." Hmmm... Granted, if you weren't familiar with the terrain, today was no day to go exploring. It was pea soup visibility out there. The weather was not actually all that bad, all things considering.



I didn't see anyone else on the mountain. It snowed lightly the whole time, with little to no breeze, air temps not too cold. I would actually call it humid. New snow was a couple inches down low, with 4 to 6+ on the upper 2/3 of the mountain. Breaking trail in in low visibility across the bowl toward the notch was pretty surreal.

I quickly discovered after making a couple turns down the summit headwall (aka:Cross alt. entrance) that those few new inches weren't really well bonded to the firmer base underneath. Each turn let loose a wet slide that cleared off a sizable section of shallow new snow in a hurry. So that meant that it was a slow, turn by turn descent.

The thick clouds sitting on the mountain gave Babycham a mysterious Gates of Mordor kind of otherworldly feel. From the top, the rock walls, closing in, just kind of faded into the clouds:


Time to descend into the mist.


Beyond the ambiance, the turns in the couloir were pretty decent, other than the fact that each turn sent a river of snow down the gut. Once or twice I tried to link 2 or 3 turns, but the sliding snow almost took my feet out once, so I mostly played it safe.

The close-in rock walls were reassuring in the low visibility. Almost cozy.

Looking back up from mid-way down:


The apron and the turns down through the zone below the chute were pretty great. Surfy wet pow, and you had to be careful to cut over after a few turns to let the wet slide sluff go by.

Somewhere up there lurks a couloir: