Lassen / Shasta Conditions Anyone?

Lassen was skiing really well yesterday. We hiked up from the south parking and skied the NE face down to the Devastated Area, dropping at around 12:30. On the way up, everybody skiing the SE face had huge smiles on their faces as well. If I were to do it again I'd probably ski that face a little earlier first, then boot back up and do the NE side. The snow goes all the way to the south parking but required 30 or 45 minutes of easy downhill bushwhacking to get back to the Devastated Area parking.

Lots of others out too; fun times.

Does anybody have an idea on how this storm is affecting lassen? Snow levels? Percipt amounts? NOAA QPF currently shows 1.41" bullseye on lassen between now and saturday.

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Originally Posted by emcee

Does anybody have an idea on how this storm is affecting lassen? Snow levels? Percipt amounts? NOAA QPF currently shows 1.41" bullseye on lassen between now and saturday.

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Lassen summit weather: http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick...7#.V2RoJDUrKUl

Point forecasts lower down suggest rain. Based on the point forecasts for Lassen and Shasta, looks like snowline is around 8000 in that part of the north state.

Think I'll be up at North Gate TH on Sunday. If you're up there and see some skittles, ask for change.

I'm headed up tomorrow morning on the hunch that it will be OK. If not, golf in the afternoon, and back to ski on Sunday.

ShastaAvalanche says the hill got up to a foot of new snow, which I gotta say isn't what I was hoping for. It's also looking kind of windy the next few days. I'm all packed up ready to hit Brewer Creek, but I'm starting to rethink.

Windbuffed or even windboard is better than tracked up corn.

Heading up to Gravel Creek TH this week.
Hopefully kayaking Cache Creek on Monday, then driving up after.
Probably rest up on Tuesday at the trail head.
Boot up to Clitoris Falls and on to the Chicago and Hotlum Glaciers towards The Step on Wednesday.

> Windbuffed or even windboard is better than tracked up corn.

Sure, could be (not that I'd expect east side to be tracked up). Being solo this time, I was hoping for something a bit more standard-predictable. Heading to Lassen instead (south side camp, old silver Forester, if anyone else is going to be out there).

Skied (or attempted to ski) Hotlam-Bolum yesterday. Snow line was about 9000 from Northgate TH. A foot of new snow and strong south winds led to windjacked new winter snow above 10.5. Far from powder but definitely wintry. Below 10, there were lots of point releases and wet slides, even on N aspects. I'll post up more pics later but here's a couple for now.

HB
http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/2016...206f6c3109.jpg

Shastina
http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/2016...0ac31bdc4d.jpg

http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/2016...9bcc8988fd.jpg

That's funny, I wonder if I was in those last 2 pics you posted...

... because I rode both of those lines yesterday! :) (and late, probably around when you took those pics...)

After getting the beta from BGnight on the road approach to Diller Canyon (BTW if you do this you want a high clearance 4wd, preferably not super wide like my big-ass van, and one which you don't mind getting all scraped to shit by the Manzanita From Hell), I figured I'd try that as a different way to approach Angel Wings. I suspected it might be decent after this refresh. Diller is actually in great shape. Continuous snow from about 7600 ft, and ZERO suncups. A couple wet slides from the storm but nothing too major. Probably will be good corn if and when the resurgence of winter in June is over up there. It was mostly breakable crust yesterday. Great for booting, not so great for riding. Anyway, from getting there at like 3 in in the morning and having a couple hours sleep, dicking around on the approach road, and just generally lagging, I got a late start at 8 AM and was seriously dragging ass getting up there, but I figured if I didn't make it over to Angel Wings then worst case I could just ride Diller, which I've never ridden.

[Side note: the only time I tried to ride Diller Canyon was like 18 years ago when I first was getting into backcountry and didn't really know what I was doing. It was also before google maps and smartphones. Tried to follow the maze of logging roads back there in my Honda Civic and gave up when I could actually see the drainage, and figured I'd just go up the drainage. After taking a "shortcut" through some manzanita that took like a hour to go about 100 yards with my 70+ lb pack (after which I saw a road connecting the two points I had bushwhacked between), I finally got into the drainage, and it quickly became a deep V cut with loose sides. It was apparently pretty quickly that there was gonna be no climbing that. I never even made it to snowline, just camped there next to the drainage and drank muddy water and shared my freeze-dried meal with the horse-sized mosquitos. Then hiked back to my car the next morning. My bc skills and luck have improved a bit since then :), but I've still been scarred by that Diller experience and never made it back there... till now. It's amazing how much easier it is when you take the right approach! From the car I hiked about 30 minutes before continuous snow.]

It was weird, definitely felt like a winter day with the winds and new snow, the only difference was that it was middle of June right before the summer solstice (!), so the sun was up waaaay longer, which came in handy.

Eventaully topped out and made my way through the crater and up to Angel Wings. I figured if it didn't look epic I was gonna bail because it was late. Unfortunately or fortunately as the case may be, it looked epic! About 2 feet of super smooth blower pow. This is one of the few places on Shasta that has any protection at all from the winds, plus they had been blowing from the right direction. Cut some cornices and everything looked good, just loose sluff. Dropped in at like 5 PM! I figured the sun is up for a long time, it may be a long time before I'm ever here with these conditions again, I gotta do this. It was epic pow all the way. A couple of the other chutes had already slid (later I saw a pretty good sized crown on the farthest skiers left one, on the side of it that faces more E) so I did one a little to riders right of the farthest left ones, and just looked for the unaffected snow the whole way. God that was an epic run. All time.

Skinning out via the Whitney glacier wasn't bad, until the wind hit me. Then it was like 2 hours of super slow skinning on shitty wind-hammered snow with the wind blasting me the whole time, it was awesome. Thank god for Gore Pro hard-shells! I was wearing everything I had, helmet, goggles, hood, every zipper locked up tight. By the time I got my slow ass back over to the top of Diller it was like 8:30 and the sun was setting. I was hoping for an epic corn run in the alpenglow to end my epic day, but alas it was breakable crust from hell for most of the 4k. Oh well, I guess that is my penance for scoring epic pow in the middle of June!! :)

Leaving this morning there were huge snow plumes from the S winds off the summit, so I'm sure conditions are changing as we speak.

Here are a few pics:

Shasta cam from the day before. Seriously, this is the middle of June???

http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u.../ShastaCam.jpg

Dropping!

http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u...w/IMG_9319.jpg

Proof of Pow

http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u...OfPowSmall.jpg

One of my most memorable runs ever

http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u...w/IMG_9323.jpg

Diller breakable crust alpenglow... at least the views were nice!

http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u...D-IMG_7737.jpg

http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u...D-IMG_7739.jpg

Fck'n cool dude!
thanx for the report.

glad you had a great time.

I'm hoping to get some epic jibbing in at Shasta this week.
Hopefully, the winds won't be too bad.

Always like reading about the conditions and others' experiences.

Thanx for the report!

^^ booyah. Thanks for the stoke!

Great score Jim. Thanks for the late season stoke!

Thanks for posting all the info and pics! Still hoping to get some turns in on Shasta this season!

yeah - awesome! well except for the breakable crust of course

I was up at Lassen on this past Sat/Sunday. It snowed about 8" at 8k feet and 3'+ in wind loaded areas at the summit.

Great coverage, you can skin and ski fully from the south parking lot to the summit. NW-side/devastated area is burned out at about 8k feet with a long hike to the road.

When we were there, the new snow had consolidated on top of graupel that was sitting on the spring snowbase. Avy conditions were spicy, we opted not to ski loaded convex slopes. Plenty of kooks and jerries bringing down medium-sized point-release wet slides big enough to mess up your day.

Probably better now.

South face skiied best all day, the wind kept it colder than the NW face and aspect is not as important near the solstice.

Probably all corn now.

Will post pictures eventually!

Did our annual Lassen ski fest this past week. We typically arrive Saturday afternoon and BBQ before setting out for an evening ski.This year was surreal due to it being the longer hours of daylight, fresh snow, and a full moon.


Lassen 4:PM June 20
Attachment 184184

The feast
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Approaching Hiel peak. 7:30PM
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Dropping in off Hiel Peak. 8:PM
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Diller and Brokeoff

Attachment 184190
Art
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Artist
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Heading back for round 2
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Heading back for a second lap on Hiiel Peak. it's about 8:20 PM[
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Surreal lighting
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We took out last lap at about 8:40 then skinned back to the car under the full moon. It was a night to remember

Sunday we joined the masses and skinned to the top. Lots of people. Snow was different but quite fun, certainly not winter like or corn
Attachment 184201

Saw some skiers shred this so we skinned over to catch the boot third, Awesome at 1:PM
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Huzzah!

https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7716/2...3b1bc2fa_c.jpg

Damn this thread is going off! Love the moon pics.

^^^ gageyk - you, sir, are Doin' It Right (tm). Love the full moon ski!

That refresh storm was great. Should smooth things out for a bit. I keep thinking I'm done but dammit seeing all these pics is making me start packing again for this weekend... :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAVuWmFuZTw

I also want to throw stoke in this thread.

Lassen Saturday and Sunday--Saturday morning the storm cleared and we pulled up right as it blew off the mountain. They only opened the road as far as sulpherworks, so we skied a zone near there that I would have never thought about. The new snow gave a great new skin-track ramp over the ridge, and the goods were awesome.

kookery causing slides
http://i.imgur.com/3nNcWEL.jpg

hot on the skintrack
http://i.imgur.com/T8FY7Di.jpg

winter is still out there
http://i.imgur.com/eOen6R7.jpg

hard-hit at the summit
http://i.imgur.com/9O1vTxG.jpg

Just back from Lassen...

NE face is a mess. Looks like snow accumulated kind of heavily there late last week, and then it got warmed before it could settle (but after a bunch of folks shreaded it up on the weekend).

South facing slopes are good if you hit them early enough, mush if you don't.

And the west side was $$$$. Perfect corn in the upper half or lower half, depending on when you get it, and the rest of it is going to be pretty good too. Continuous snow from summit flats to base, for now (and then all the way back over saddle to car, unless you want to cut over and not bother putting skins on, in which case there's one little scree-band to cross). Chris from Juneau on west slope:

http://bobskiing.com/tmp/lassen_e.jpg

I talked to a guy who did a west-of-north slope (leaving him at the southern base of Chaos Crags) and he said great conditions, though the way out is to head all the way back up the hill.

It was a good summer solstice ski at Shasta.
http://www.backcountrytalk.earnyourt...H-June-22-2016

Hoping for more in July!

Would South/Southeast Lassen route still have good skiable stuff on 4th of July?