After several amazing days in the backcountry, the Sierra snowpack has once again surprised me. We skied on all aspects, including south facing, and we saw no natural or skier caused releases, no shooting cracks, and no whoomping. Just smiles and desires for one more lap. We stayed in the trees and off of steeper slopes, so hopefully the temperatures will stay cold and conditions stable.
JB

Ha. Thought I'd bump this old unanswered thread to ask.........

what would you ski this wknd in the eastern sierra.

i'm getting continously skunked on extended weekends and having to work on powder wknds. :cry:

figuring only sunny exposures would be good and maybe not too high to avoid forecast winds.

looking for lines where I would be happy to ride corn and not save for powder days.

Victoria needs to get ticked off. Wood? Table?

chuting would be fun - tinnehama? schellite would probably suck, eh.

how are the sagebrush approaches down south?

thx.

problem right now is low snow coverage down lower on South exposures and high winds and cold up high. if your willing to just deal with marginal snow coverage (skiing is never that good at the bottom anyway in the flats), then go for it when they forcast winds under 20mph.

around tahoe everything facing south near the road got skied into moguls over the last few weeks. And there isn't that much coverage in the first place.

SE facing side of Echo peak's bowl could be good and less tracked. pyramid's SE side, jack's S side accessed from bayview trailhead...

I search google for "sierra crest wind speeds" and look at the sensors the morning before going, and also check the Dweeb's mammoth area report.

one good protected south facing run would be Kidney Couloir. boot up one of the east side plateau chutes, or just tour all the way around to get it and come back the way you came. 5000' and should be snow all the way to the car.

with now winds you could follow my trip report beta for Slide Mountain out of Big Pine. Killer view of the palisades from a 4000'ish climb fairly near the car parked at 8000'. South facing. not protected from winds though, bring crampons and axe just in case.

victoria is still good to go and protected from winds pretty well. start skinning at 8am at the latest from twin lakes. I did that one last week.

S side of dunderberg would be well covered but you need a snow machine to get up the road. Ahhh, a snowmobile would get me into a lot of places I can't get to.... but i already have a moto that I ride twice a year, so forget that one!

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

If any of us Californians had any Pacific Northwest sense in us, we would stop flopping around like fish out of water as soon as all the snow got hard and wind blasted, looking for what to ski, what to ski... and we would start cramponing up to amazing summits just to summit them! We would experience how awesome and fast it is with zero ski gear to weight us down, and get that summit view by 10 AM and be thirsty for another and another.

It's addicting... once you feel what it's like to charge up a huge mountain as fast as you can do it on crampons w/no ski or snowboard weight on you, it's just amazing. Sure you don't get to carve glorious turns on the descent, but that's why you consider other summits for this, the ones you might never ski.

I should speak for myself though... right now I'm just working all I can so I can ski when Ullr blows the old powder horn again!