Friday morning was the first bluebird day after the storm, what a beautiful dawn.


I love it when Highway 89 looks like this -- closed at Emerald Bay and we have the Maggie's area all to ourselves.


We skinned up Eagle Creek to Maggie's Ridge and saw our objective, Janine's Peak, looking good:


We had a good view of the northwest side of Tallac.




Dick's Peak was looking mighty fine from the top of Janine's:


In fact pretty much everything was looking great out there...


Here's the Kalmia Bowl which we were about to ski.


Wish there had been time for laps up there.


Deep soft dry powder 2,000 feet down to Snow Lake.


Then all kinds of surface patterns as we ascended the southwest side of Maggie's Peak South.


About to summit


Looking back west over Desolation Wilderness


Freel Peak always gets the last light in South Lake Tahoe. North ridge of Tallac in the foreground.


Looking back at where we descended.


Emerald Bay and Cascade Lake turned into beautiful dark mirrors. Winds all day were calm.


Definitely not skiing the Dogleg chute this time...


But the run off the north side of South Maggie's was awesome powder. Blue and bluer...

Rad! Looked like a long day. Did a north facing line off of backside of Tallac today. It was still great pow. Lower north facing down on east side of Tallac not so much.

Nice one, Brooks. Sounds like a lot of areas got a little cooked today, though not everything. Other friends interestingly found the best snow of their day on some southeast faces which had only gotten sun during very cold morning air. Go figure!

The north facing line off the back of Tallac that you hit, was it the long continuous one in my Tallac photo above? Like to Tallac Lake? Or was it more clockwise around the mountain, down in the Cascade Creek canyon?

Great photos Eric. Amazing area. How was stability? Any obs to share?

Unfortunately I suspect that all observations from Friday are very expired by now, with windy days over 50 degrees ever since. But the fact was that the snow where we descended (first Janine's/Kalmia, then down to Snow Lake, then the north side of south Maggie's down to Granite Lake) was stable and behaved like an ideal layer with a perfect density gradient. In fact it was remarkable for how smooth it was, with the lightest stuff always on top and no discernible layers and no tendency to shear or behave as a mass. I started the day very cautious and tried steeper and steeper slopes by the end with no change in that.

We planned to dig, but everything went so well that we just didn't get down and do it.

Two small to medium sized natural releases (probably from Thursday?) were observed in the next bowl over, a quarter mile closer to Tallac, on northeast facing slopes. Crowns around 2 feet? by 50? and ran like 150'. The main one had its crown at the foot of a cliff and the other one was in trees. They appeared to be on steeper slopes than what we skied, and are both in an area where I think the surface in the summer is mostly Tallac-type scree and slabs.

But yeah, I don't really think anything I noted from Friday holds any more after major temperature change. I'm thinking there might be some amounts of not-too-transformed powder on northwest to northeast facing slopes where it's best sheltered and shaded. But my guess would be that a lot of slopes are in the business of transforming and densification, yet not enough to count as corn yet.

The south slopes of Maggie's were in many places totally rotten, and in many places it's just that the new 4 feet of snow is all there was over previously dry brush slopes. But it was still no real problem to ascend out of Snow Lake and Cascade Creek to Maggie's even so.

Thanks Eric - assumed as much on obs becoming stale due to the dramtic change in weather. I just always like to hear from folks what they found snow and stablility wise in different zones to keep a rolling mental tab on snowpack history throughout the season.

Video of the run down to Snow Lake: nice boot-deep powder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D7zHTggoXM

The skier is Glen a.k.a. "switchtele" or I forget what his username is on this board.

Hurray!! Thanks for posting Eric. I really appreciate having the opportunity to ski and share time with you. It was a privilege. Cheers Glen.