February 19, 2009, Rose Knob Peak (Tahoe)

One day on lifts was pleasant yesterday, but we were interested in more lonely backcountry experience this day.  Peter and Holly came up with a nice idea that involved a short car shuttle to the outskirts of Incline Village, drive the other car to a 1000' ski up for a nice 2500' descent, short day so they could get some work done.  Love the Tahoe work life balance!

Anyway, off we went, with Gale this time, who had been injured a while back and had not really done any telemark skiing since the Ortler Alps when I met her in April 2006.   Of course she was skate skiing and bicycling at competitive levels instead.   It was a classic perfect backcountry day, temps in the 20s, full sun, minimal wind, blue skies, good friends, and excellent powder.

On the way to our summit there was a south facing short down ski where we found gooey cascade "powder".   Once on the summit, it appeared that the ski out was going to be more of the same, so being flexible, we decided to alter our plan and ski east facing slopes back to our starting point.  It was a good decision.  We saw only two other skiers when we left the car who headed off in a different direction, two on our sub summit who quickly disappeared, and two headed in at 2pm when we were back at the car.   Love the Nevada wilderness.   Lucky for us the professional filmmakers stayed inbounds at Homewood. ;-)