April 28, 2006, Melissa Coray Peak, Lake Tahoe

This was Jill€™s first tour since the Mt. Tallac trip which aggravated the arthritis in her hip and knee, so we were both hoping the Celebrex would €œwork on the mountain€.  Melissa Coray at 9763 feet is the high point of a dramatic cirque southeast of the Kirkwood ski resort.  We started at the top of €œThe Wall€ lift and skinned to the saddle behind Thimble Peak.  The backside of Kirkwood was closed and it was deserted. It was a sunny day with temperatures in the 40€™s and heading to the 60€™s.  The breeze provided a relief from the heat but the snow pack was cooking.  We traversed the northeast face of Thimble Peak and wrapped around the southwest side of Covered Wagon Peak.  The west facing bowl between Covered Wagon and Melissa Coray was a few inches of corn on a firm base at 11am and was perfect.  Although we were tempted to ski it, we continued skinning to Melissa Coray where we stopped for lunch.  The summit has a PG & E weather station. The summit is directly south of Emigrant Lake 1200 feet below.  The cirque looks a bit like Avalanche Basin and The King at Crystal, but is much larger and has more chutes and corniced slopes. We skinned along the top of the cirque to a northwestern facing chute, but there was sloughing on all the exposures and cornice debris along the northeast face.  Looking east was Fourth Of July Peak and all the peaks around Carson Pass.  A great photo day but the snow was still unconsolidated.  We surfed along the ridge and descended northwesterly to Emigrant Creek. We then wrapped around Fantasy Ridge to the base of the Sunrise lift at Kirkwood.  The area was closed, but we had a nice consolidated cat track to skin up to Caples Crest for our final descent to the base of the ski resort.  It was a beautiful tour of about 3400 vertical  and covered about 6 miles roundtrip.  The most important thing was that Jill was able to complete the tour with only minor discomfort from her arthritis.  Hopefully, a couple of downhill days will provide enough rest before our next tour.

Zap & Jill