Since the temps are supposed to cool off, I have a tour planed for this weekend: Tioga Lake/Dana Plateau/Kidney Chute/Dana Chute.

Can anyone give be any betta on these areas? I have done Dana Chute before and am not particularly concerned with that. I am most concerned with the climb from Kidney Lake to the Mt. Dana/Gibbs Col. Can anyone give us any beta on this? Also, what are snow conditions like in the Kidney Chute?

If Kidney is a no go, we will just do Dana Chute.

would love to see pics, sorry I didn't see this in time to give you my two cents. hopefully you didn't climb kidney from the valley floor, you can drive up high and ski it off the plateau with 1500' of climbing.

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

Fixed it for ya. :) (Top of Kidney is around 12,300')

So harpo, how was it??

was down in lee vegas over the weekend after bailing on shasta and the 10 hr rt in the car and ended up playing around the plateau solo sat and sun so i can give an update on the present status.

east facing is corning well but has a relatively short window. anything west facing is staying good late. ellery dropped its freight train cornices this past week so there is some carnage in the bowl and the ellery chutes are in pretty good shape but not as smooth as last week. 3rd pillar is great in the chute but not worth dropping the apron. in fact, most all the plateau lines are the same, good and smooth in the chutes but not so much in the aprons. the exceptions are the kidney which is good all the way down and powerhouse which skied well all the way down at 3pm, especially the steep nw aspect up top. it still goes 99.9% of the way down though u need to dismount at the very last large conifer and bust left for 5 minutes to gain the last connecting snow that goes to the road.

the stuff off dana's summit ridge looks pretty meh this year. very short windows for solstice and unknown and evverybody has been missing it so its pretty trenched. the dana and the steep exposed face next to it look good but i didnt ski it this year.

soooo, blah, blah, blah, tioga is still definately worth the effort but you should be skiing easterly no later then 9-10 and westerly no earlier then 11-12.