March 30-April 4, 2008, Lake Tahoe

Spent this last week at Lake Tahoe with the family.  Spent 2 days area skiing (Kirkwood and Alpine Meadows) and 4 days backcountry skiing.  The snow pack was at 87% of normal and coverage was pretty good, although south facing and sometimes west facing slopes were pretty dry in places.   With regards to area skiing, I thought both Kirkwood and Alpine Meadows were slightly better than Crystal in terms of ski-able area and variety of expert terrain.  My daughter also skied Squaw Valley and she thought it was even better.

I was really impressed with the amount of easily accessed backcountry skiing around Tahoe.  We skied the following areas:

Mt Tallac (Elev. 9,700 ft): The first day I went up Mt. Tallac.  This is a really excellent ski mountain with 3,400 ft of skiing and direct access that makes for a reasonably short day.  The north bowl is moderate while the south ramp leads to a number of steep challenging lines.  I was planning on taking the easy standard route down but was lucky enough to meet up with three locals who let me tag along.  We looked down the cross (which I believe is one of Dawson's 54 classic ski descents) which my new friends considered before heading further down the south ramp to the southeast cirques.  This was a great ski, steep with a few inches of windblown powder filling in most areas.  Unfortunately I have no pictures.  If you're interested in meeting up with some locals in the Tahoe area let me know.

Donner Peak (Elev. 8,000 ft):  This trip included 900 feet of climbing from Donner Summit, 2,000 feet of skiing, hitchhiking back to Donner Summit, then repeat.  The first lap involved a ski down the southeast shoulder followed by a short hike through an abandoned train tunnel to access a short steep face down to the road.  The second lap involved skiing the northwest shoulder with a 6-foot drop off the snow shed in the middle of the face.  Lots of fun steep skiing on this mountain.  We were able to ski about 4,000 ft with only 1,800 feet of skinning.  See photo below.

Ralston Peak and Talking Mountain near Echo Summit:  This was about 10 minutes from the house where we stayed so I took advantage of another car assist.  My wife dropped me off at 7,300 and I skinned up the ridge to the east shoulder of Ralston Peak (elevation 9,100).  I skied a north facing bowl, shown on the photo below.  Skinned back up to Talking Mt. and skied the steep north face down to Lower Echo Lake.  Skinned across the lake and then skied another 800 ft down to the road at 6,300 ft for the pick up.  Managed about 3,500 feet of skiing with only 2,500 of skinning.

Elephants Back near Carson Summit:  My daughter Allison joined me on this trip. It was a beautiful day but the wind was howling so we didn't go for the summit and skied off the north shoulder.  The upper part of the ski is shown on the photo below.  The top was pretty steep and hard but we found some good corn down low.  Eventually we ended up at the road and hitchhiked back up to the pass.  We did this twice.  My daughter took a rest while I climbed partway up Red Lake Peak to the north and skied down to the road.  About 3,000 ft of skiing for only 2,000 feet of skinning.