Saturday May 9, 2009
Day 2 of my trip on Friday turned into a letdown ordeal of an ambitious aborted overnight trip attempt to Mt Darwin, which I will post on later. But suffice it to say that there is a definite lack of sufficient snow below 10,500' anywhere south of Mammoth, which meant I decided to re-focus my efforts on Tioga Pass where there is bountiful snow right at the road and lots of reasonable options for rewarding turns. The change of plans had me scrambling to the various guidebooks along on the trip. So I settled on the north slope of White Mountain, the very-slightly higher, lightly visited, and definitely more distant neighbor-sibling to the hyper-popular False White Mtn.

Ah, skinning consistently right from the car. How luxurious.



It's a bit of a tour to get to the base of the peak, but it's a gloriously beautiful one along a mostly flat and gentle creek valley.

Looking back at Mt Dana:



White Mountain is the bowl-shaped one on the left (that's the east bowl you're looking at). The summit is one of the barely discernible pointy peaks in the center of that bowl. The north slope is out of view (facing north) around the corner. As the guidebook promised -- "out of sight, out of mind" for the hordes that descend on False White, just out of the photo to the left. I had White Mtn to myself, as dozens skied False White on Saturday.



The north slope of White Mtn is basically part of a big dramatic glacial cirque formed by one of the many ridges (south ridge?) of the Mt Conness massif. The ridge features some massive cornices. I had the pleasure/terror of seeing a huge chunk of it collapse. It sounded like thunder and scared the bejeesus out of me though I was a safe distance away and up a slope a ways out of harm's way, but the chunk shattered into a million pieces and didn't cause even much of a wet slide. Here is where the cornice broke from:


Looking up the north slope:


Some part of the north slope were surprisingly firm on the way up, even at the advanced time of 11am in total sun, but I knew they would soften fast.

Looking back at Conness and that ridge with the cornices:


Looking down the east ridge of White Mtn:


Looking down my line on the north slope:


the turns were primo sierra springtime.

Nice pics, sfskier, and it was good to see you out there on Saturday. We found the snow was still holding with good conditions on that North slope an hour or so after you skiied by us. Sierra Souljah might have some pics of your descent to post later. We started the day with 2 laps on North Peak and found decent corn forming at 0830 and excellent corn again around 10AM on both aspects of the SE Face of North Peak. The E -SE faces above the Lee Vining Creek drainage off the Conness Ridgeline were perfect white velvet around 11-11:30 and then that North facing run off White Mountain ended an excellent prime-time sierra corn skiing day!

Where did you park?

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SierraDescents.com

saddlebag lake road parking area/turnout on the right side of the road just past Ellery lake. Can't miss it. Tons of cars.

Were you coming from the east side? I thought TPR was still closed at the gate way down low ???

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SierraDescents.com

dude - Tioga pass skiing has been in full spring swing for a couple weeks now. The road is open from Lee Vining all the way to the park gate. So yeah, you have to come from the east side, for now. Sonora Pass is supposed to open on 5/14 and I think Ebbets is now open as of this past weekend. I imagine Tioga will open in the next week or two.

Jeez am I clueless! I was waiting for the gate to open. :)

Uh...anyone want to ski Conness or Dana this weekend?

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SierraDescents.com

Nice sfskier. White is such a great area, esp to overnight as you can stay on the west side of the creek the whole way out with very minimal elevation gain.