Howdy backcountry skiers and snowboarders! Wow, what a run we are having. Snow conditions have been incredible for almost 4 weeks now. Aside from immediately after the mega wind event that destroyed the snowpack and many trees in the Eastern Sierra just before X-mas, the powder has been light, fluffy, and cold, from boot top to waist deep. Avalanche conditions have been mostly manageable this season to date, other than a couple cycles of disconcerting direct action avalanche activity. This …
Eastern Sierra Ice Report – December 27th, 2015
Happy holidays ice climbers, Not a whole lot of new to report from the Eastside. It was a strong start to the season in December and the ice remains in good form. The trail in to Lee Vining Canyon is currently decent, with a few large holes that are to be expected. The Main Wall and Chouinard Wall are looking good and climbing well. Horsetail Falls was getting there, then fell down, and now has reformed. There is climbable ice …
Eastern Sierra Backcountry Snow Report – December 27th, 2015
Happy Holidays backcountry skiers and snowboarders, December has been good to us. Small to medium storms with winds in between is the pattern. The winds of December 21-23 toppled dozens of full grown beetle-killed snags in the June Mountain backcountry and littered the snow surface with an unprecedented amount of detritus on top of sastrugi. Not such fun conditions, after a couple weeks of excellent cold powder skiing. Fortunately, it was a white X-mas and we got another 1’+ on top. …
Eastern Sierra Backcountry Snow Report – December 18th, 2015
Hi backcountry skiers and snowboarders, The 2015-16 snow season is underway! Hopefully you have had a chance to reconnoiter with the white stuff, either at the resort or in the backcountry. If you haven’t, don’t worry, this season is still being hyped and prognosticated as the Donald Trump of El Niños, it’s HUGE! Since the beginning of December, there have been 3 small to medium sized storms that have impacted our area. From these, Mammoth Mountain recorded 24 inches of …
Eastern Sierra Ice Report – November 25th, 2015
Season’s greetings ice climbers! Once again, the nip is in the air and thoughts turn to climbing frozen waterfalls. That means we are excited to provide consistent, up-to-date reporting on local conditions throughout the season. We guide and climb in the best ice climbing venue on the west coast, and we hope you will get a chance to enjoy the ice here this season. We have been getting a lot of questions about how the ice is doing. We have …
Eastern Sierra Backcountry Snow Report November 24th, 2015
Salutations backcountry skiers and snowboarders! The backcountry season is open! That means we at SMG now continue our tradition of reporting on the current and recent snow conditions for the Eastern Sierra. As a reminder, This report is not an avalanche advisory, nor is it comparable to information offered by any avalanche information center. The Eastern Sierra Avalanche Center is the local avalanche center that keeps us all informed on snow and avalanche conditions for purposes of backcountry risk management. …
Alpine Conditions Report – November 22, 2015
Hi everyone, hope you have enjoyed the fall. The Eastside air is getting crisp and the sun has that low angle glow all day here where the desert meets the mountains. We have had a pretty good start to the super-hyped El Niño 2015-16 snow season. Mammoth Mountain’s study plot at 9000′ has recorded 47.5″ of snowfall since October 16. With some cold, easily transportable snow on the ground, a few big wind events and some unseasonably warm spells in …
Alpine Conditions Report – July 8, 2015
Hi Sierra Nevada aficionados and enthusiasts, Quick update to our last report on July 1, as things in the high country are changing quite rapidly. As we have been reporting, the Sierra remains in a steady stream of daily thunderstorm activity from monsoonal air flow and warm, moist air rising that condenses clouds, resulting in precipitation and electrical activity. Precipitation has been in the form of intense short or, in some cases, up to a couple sustained hours of rain …
Alpine Conditions Report – July 1, 2015
Howdy mountaineers and high country enthusiasts, Hope you are all enjoying summer at this point. We are! After the driest winter on record, the High Sierra experienced one of the wettest calendar months ever. The town of Bishop hit May records for amount of rainfall and consecutive days with precipitation. In June, mountain weather has remained somewhat unusual with daily high temperatures spanning more than 30 degrees F in many locations. In Bishop, 17 days have hit highs in the …
Alpine Conditions Report – June 6, 2015
Howdy Mountain People! Happy almost summer, as it may be. Certainly isn’t acting like summer. But 2015 is a year for weather extremes. After the biggest drought year ever recorded in the Sierra Nevada, somehow May was the wettest ever recorded in Bishop. The forecast is for more of the same lingering low pressure, with another 1+” of H2O projected over the next week with thunderstorms. The high country is currently in alpine form. Snow in couloirs ranges from styrofoam neve …
Alpine Conditions Report – May 8, 2015
Crazy year. After the biggest drought on record in California, we enter late spring with a series of storms, the last two of which are the biggest of the year to date. This weather is wackbards! It’s supposed to be high and dry in the summer/fall and stormy in the winter/spring. That’s what all of us high mountain lovers have come to expect and appreciate. The situation is out of sync, like a mountain guide trying to dance to 90’s …
Alpine Conditions Report – April 18, 2015
Hi everyone, Welcome to the High Sierra Alpine Conditions Report! This is the first one of 2015, transitioning early from the Backcountry Snow Report for skiers and snowboarders which we will not be updating further this season, courtesy of “the big dry” (the biggest drought on record in California). The drought is a bane for almost everyone, and we should all be a lot more concerned than we seem to be, but it does represent a boon for alpine …