Skied the road from the Hope Valley turnout to the lake 1500 feet below Red Lake Peak summit yesterday .Adequate 12 + inch coverage at the bottom improved to 3+ feet of cold powder at 9,000 . It was -6 degrees at the junction of Hwys.89 & 88 at 9:30 am and 19 degrees at 2 pm at the turnout but there was no wind and I didn't have to wear a jacket or shell until the run down. Saw a dark weasel -like animal up high . No snowmobile tracks . The restroom at the Blue Lakes Road Snopark was open . Pray ,dance,etc. for more snow !

I listed the wrong peak ! We were at Stevens not Red Lake .

Skied Red Lake Peak yesterday (Mon 1/19) mid-day. For once I got to "cheat" and got a ride (from my lovely wife) to the pass, instead of starting down on 88 at the usual pull-out spot. So I booted up what I think is the summer trail to the peak. Mostly dirt hiking, some patches of snow (mostly at the beginning of the trail near the pass). Weather was gorgeous on the way up. I think I read that John C Fremont "discovered" Lake Tahoe upon ascening Red Lake Peak -- you really get that dramatic moment when you pop up to the ridge and the lake reveals itself in the distance. Anyway, some high clouds rolled in just after I got to the summit and my ride was waiting down at the road, so I had to skeedaddle. Skied the north face down through some cliffs and trees to the lake. As I had hoped, affriming on my "recon" work testing different exposures in the resort at Kirkwood on Sunday, the north face of Red Lake Peak had pretty wintery edgeable snow, with a little funky crust and even some unconsolidated pow in the trees and some open faces. All in all, fun skiing. The traverse out the bottom below the lake was pretty hellish, with crusty, unsoftened ruts, and so I mostly just stuck to the well-tracked jeep road below at the lower elevations.

rode Red Lake Peak January 10 and 11 using a split-board. We shuttled leaveing one car on the pass and another on Hwy 88. The split-board was pretty useless on the way up as we took the easterly trail out of the parking lot to a bullet proof traverse face that was an energy zapping edgeless unnecessary route. And after that the rest of the trail to the summit was bare dirt and rock. Then we had to descend, hiking, what normally one can ride on a good year, 500+ feet, until we could finally strap in. We rode the easterly face down. The first 400 feet was good, until we hit an icy weird hard crust formed by some freezing rain a week prior. This snow tended to grab one's edge and cause instant faceplants. Normally on a good year one can ride all the way to the road. But due to the low snowpack all these Aspen trees prevented any speed gain and required some serious slalom to end up in the flats with an ~ mile hike out.

This route is not recommended unless you feel like a good self-torture with little payoff.

Although, it was a good adventure with great weather and epic views.

The next day we did a quick hike to a cliffband a couple 100 feet below the southern summit and rode the south slopes down and hit the PCT out. It was nice and slushy. Oh yes!

Great conditions this morning on RLP. Balls cold at -11 in Hope Valley, but it sure made for some of the driest pow I've skied this year. Coverage was good down to Crater Lake and all the way to the car. Quite a few tracks in the last few days, but still lots of untracked and Stevens looks really good (maybe still untouched?). Now that the snowmo's are no no up there, you should be able to find the untracked for a lot longer than previous years. Toby and JT had time to skin up and do the East Face too, not sure how that skied, but I would imagine pretty good. The East wind was pretty kind and didn't do too much damage on the exposed faces. Stability was good on the steep pitches we skied.

anyone got a picture showing snow cover around Carson Pass? Skiing is good to the north, but thin like it was two weeks ago still.

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

Here are a few from today

Elephants Back


Round Top


Snow was good but the wind is hammering it. Was nuking fairly hard in the late afternoon.

Scruff

The weekend storms did the job. East Face gully skied realy nice this morning. Good coverage to the road. Only saw slide activity on smaller isolated snow fields.

How it looked post plundering:

I was up at Carson looking for turns this weekend. Everything was hammered by the Wind(especially)/sun. South facing was melted out; SE and SW were heavily wind affected, north, wind slabs. Hopefully it will get better with these current storms. Back up there over the New Year weekend with a dream of some good snow.