Backcountry skiing at Lake Tahoe

Hi !

This was two weeks ago when MC was in Boulder for the Fulbright seminar (see previous post) but it took me a while to process, scan and clean the B&W pictures I shot.

On Thursday night, after dropping MC at the airport in the morning, I checked the weather at Lake Tahoe and found out that it would be nice from Friday night until Sunday morning... Perfect for a one day alpine touring trip at Lake Tahoe. I prepared my skiing and bivy gear so everything would be ready when I would come back from Stanford: I planned to drive up on Friday night, camp somewhere near Mount Tallac, ski to the summit on Saturday morning and drive back in the afternoon to be ready to get MC at the airport in the early afternoon on Sunday.

I left Mountain View at 7pm on Friday and arrived at South Lake Tahoe around 10:30pm. I parked the car next to the entrance of Eagle Point Campground (closed in the winter) which is part of Emerald Bay State Park. I loaded my pack with my camping gear and walked for about 20min by the light of my headlamp before finding a nice spot where I could lay down my sleeping bag for the night. On Saturday morning, after a short breakfast (oatmeal and hot chocolate, as usual) I did some tree climbing to get an even better view of Emerald bay and Lake Tahoe. It was about 8am when I was back at the car to go to Mount Tallac's trailhead.

I started skinning up Mount Tallac at about 8:45am... The weather was really nice and because Mount Tallac is supposed to be one of Tahoe's most scenic peaks, it was not surprising to see quite some people already heading to the summit in front of me and some more behind. The climb up the NE ridge of Tallac to the summit is steep: 3,300 feet in less than 2.5 miles. Three hours and a few snack/picture breaks later I made it to the summit where the wind was blowing very hard. From there, the views on Lake Tahoe on one side and Desolation Wilderness on the other are beautiful, as you can see on the pictures. I then headed back down. The first part, just below the summit, is pretty steep on hard packed snow: it's almost like skiing on groomed runs at a ski resort. Then there was a nice section on light powder getting heavier on the way down. The final part of the downhill run was on easy spring corn. At 12:45pm I was back at the car... It really was a perfect day: I was ready to go home with no regrets!

While I was driving back, after no more than 15 minutes, I started thinking that it was a little sad to be up here with all the gear for only one night... Maybe I could stay for one more night, just for the fun and drive back on Sunday morning... Maybe... Then I passed the trailhead to Ralston peak. I stopped and checked my guide book "50 classic backcountry ski and snowboard summits". It didn't take me long to make up my mind: I would skin up part of the route this afternoon with the bivy gear, tag the summit early next morning, ski down to the car and make it just in time back to the apartment to pick up MC at the airport.

After getting some food at a small grocery store, it was already 4:30pm when I was ready to go (*). I installed my small "camp" some 1200 feet higher (at about 7700 feet): I dug a trench in the snow because the wind was blowing quite hard. After melting some snow, I made some pasta's for dinner and ate them with a nice view on the sunset. I slept pretty well that night despite the wind and even some snow: the bad weather was clearly moving in. I woke up at about 6am (I did not hear my alarm that was supposed to get me up at 5:30), took a fast but warm :-) breakfast and packed my gear. At 6:30 I was ready to go as light as possible: just a granola bar in my pocket and leaving my pack at the "camp". One hour and 30 minutes later I stood on the summit in howling winds... Anyway I hadn't much time to spare, so I took a few pictures removed the skins from my skis and headed back down. I made a small navigation error but I corrected it just in time and made it back to my camping spot where I loaded my pack. At 9am I was sitting in the car, ready to go. This time I had really no regrets :-)

I was back home in Mountain View at 12 o'clock, perfectly in time!

That's it for this post... But we still have lots of things to tell: last week we went skiing again with Cedric & Maureen (downhill skiing) and we went to the concert of U2, here in San Jose!

Goeric

(*) Actually in the meantime I changed my mind twice: I started to go towards Pyramid Peak but I didn't find any tracks so I went back to the car and to the trailhead of Ralston Peak again :-S