Howdy backcountry skiers and snowboarders! May auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind. Goodbye 2014. We hardly knew ye. And frankly – other than a bare handful of backcountry days that were “the. best. ever.” – I’d be happy to delete your pathetic, dry excuse for a backcountry season from my memory. But here we are in virtually the same situation as a year ago – with a meager snowpack of 30-70cm in shaded and sheltered locations above the …
Eastern Sierra Ice Report – December 29, 2014
Ice Climbers! Brrrrrrrr, it’s cold. Just what we need for building ice! With these temps expect the ice to be growing and attaching well to the cliffs of Lee Vining Canyon and June Lake. Horsetail Falls and Tatums in June Lake are both climbable with caution if not trepidation. Good fun! Roadside Ice should be good for a lazy toprope hero session and appears to have been engineered for this season. Lundy and Parker canyons are good to go …
Eastern Sierra Ice Report – December 23, 2014
Happy Holidays ice climbers! It is warm. Too warm. In Lee Vining Canyon the ice is in, but only really at Chouinard Falls. There are 3 or 4 decent climbable lines there and with high temps today up there reaching the mid-50’s the ice is dropping. Yesterday, our guide Viren Perumal reported the Main Wall was actively shedding ice throughout the day and his photos show a significant loss of ice around the thin edges since last week. Any ice …
Eastern Sierra Backcountry Snow Report
December 17th, 2014 Howdy backcountry skiers and snowboarders, The backcountry season has begun! Rarely have we seen such consistently inconsistent weather forecasting here as we have this month. The snow amounts have been way off almost every time, some in our favor and most not. Fortunately there have been enough of those disappointing little systems to leave us with a little backcountry. The December storms started warm and helped to pack in a good base. The more recent storms have …
Eastern Sierra Ice Report – December 15, 2014
Howdy ice climbers, Temps have been dropping so we went to Lee Vining Canyon to have a look see. The ice is a bit anemic this early season, but better than last report and well attached to the rock, even in the thinner areas. Climbing quality is very good. Bring short screws. Try not to knock down the tender icicles forming over the rock bulges. These will be fun to climb in the near future. Chouinard Falls is really the …
Eastern Sierra Backcountry Snow Report – December 13, 2014
Mount Tom near Bishop, CA at 8:30am on December 13, 2014 Hi bc skiers and snowboarders, This is a quick post-storm morning update. Classically, this storm was overhyped by forecast models and discussions, at least for this part of California. That said, we ended up with 1-2 feet of dense snow at the upper elevations, which is a decent start. We now have a backcountry, though not the coverage that we would expect to enjoy after what was hailed …
Eastern Sierra Backcountry Snow Report – December 8, 2014
Bishop Skyline 12/7/14 Howdy Backcountry Skiers and Snowboarders! Hope you are all well this holiday season and looking forward to more snow. We are all due for it here in CA. Nature owes us big time. That said, the last 3 years of drought have provided a few of my best Eastern Sierra ski days ever. Just imagining what a return to average might yield is as exciting as anticipating the coming storm. But before I go into that, here’s …
Eastern Sierra Ice Report – December 7, 2014
Hi there ice climbers! Everyone expects that by now in the season we should be kicking and swinging with abandon. We had a handful of seasons in the past decade where that happened. This year though, it’s been too warm. We had a bit of a cold snap in late November that started to freeze things and the snow free approaches offered some climbing opportunities in the mountains on the flows that generally get buried or tougher to access later in …
Eastern Sierra Ice Report – November 22, 2014
Howdy ice climbers! It’s been a while, how have you been? It’s fall and we have emerged from a bit of a cold spell. It is no surprise that we receiving inquiries on ice conditions. We are excited about it too, but this is the time of year when options are limited and young ice is at it’s most fragile. In Lee Vining Canyon the Chouinard Falls has a bit of climbable thin ice. We don’t recommend people to go there …
Alpine Conditions Report – November 2, 2014
Split Mountain and the Big Pine skyline emerge from the clouds on November 1, 2014 Well mountain lovers, another summer has gone down in the books and autumn is in full gear. The High Sierra has just received its first fall storm, late enough where the short days, cool temps, and low sun angles will cause it to stick in high and shady places. For most people this marks the end of the high elevation hiking for the year, …
One Weekend in Autumn…
It was good that Alex had the wherewithal to contact me last week about a climb of Charlotte Dome over the Columbus Day weekend. We enjoyed comfortable temperatures, a kiss of westerlies, and all the gloriously textured and featured granite that one can dream of. Charlotte Dome captivated our entire day, stopping time like mug of hot coffee or a snifter of fine brandy, and our cups raneth over. This October, the month of harvest, we reaped peaceful rewards after …
Featured Alpine Route: The Southeast Ridge of Mount Russell
The Southeast Ridge of Mount Russell (III, 5.9) is a classic alpine gem of a route that gets relatively little traffic or mention by guidebook authors. There are 7 different guidebooks for climbing on Mount Russell in my library and the route is listed in 3 of them. There are surprisingly very few details about this route that I could discover in these books, or from internet searches, so I figure this might be useful for someone. A conversation …