Just checking if anyone as been up North North in California. How's the conditions? Deep? Spring everywhere right now in CA.... So Sierra is looking bleak for anything after June 1st...
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Just checking if anyone as been up North North in California. How's the conditions? Deep? Spring everywhere right now in CA.... So Sierra is looking bleak for anything after June 1st...
It will soon be time!
I asked the same on the E. Sierra thread. Schralphmacchio said:
I don't have Shasta beta, but I was at Lassen 2 weeks ago and that's all in pretty good shape. I left my long lens at home so my photos of Shasta don't show much detail, and you can't really see HW or West Face very well from Lassen anyways. Snow at Lassen was down to about 6000 on all aspects that I could see, before it turned into a shrubfest. 4K continuous feet of windpacked turns on the west face, while everyone was crossing tracks in Tahoe that weekend, was pretty good! (the 5 mile flat ski back to the car was not that good!)
Quote:
Originally Posted by buildakicker
They've been getting more precip up there out of these recent systems too...
If/When my buddy sends me some beta photos, I'll post them up.
i am assuming you are already checking the shasta avy advisory. they dont update often but they usually mention skiing conditions
Lassen NP is already working on clearing the road. Should be an early season.
Here's the latest:
Smooth and very good skiing conditions were found yesterday above 8,300 feet on the south side of Mt. Shasta...however below that, while the snow was supportable, very sticky snow kept skis pointed in only one direction - down! Get your spring tune and proper wax to combat the lower slopes back to your vehicle. Northerly, upper elevation aspects may still hold some dryer snow, but warmer temps and rain as of late has the snow settling out and working towards a melt/freeze cycle. An isothermic and stable snowpack exists overall.
Temperatures yesterday reached a balmy 76F out at Ash Creek, east of McCloud/Mt. Shasta and 71F in Mt. Shasta City. At Castle Lake we saw a high of 64F and 50F on Gray Butte.
One could still ski at Castle Lake currently, however it's getting pretty thin. Rock and manzanita slalom is the name of the game up there now. The lake is still frozen and supportable of weight. Use caution near the edges.
Yesterday, 3-30-13, insignificant wet-loose slides were easily triggered off of "Criblets Ridge", the east/west facing, north/south running ridgeline that separates Powder Bowl and Sun Bowl. The slides were within the top 1" to 2" of snow and on slopes steeper than 38-40 degrees and ran only 10-20 feet. A larger, shallow wet-loose slide was viewed in Sun Bowl and is suspected to have released on 3-29-13. My guess is it was skier triggered... Sun Bowl is south facing, 35-38 degrees... The slide ran several hundred feet, though was of little consequence. Roller balls were plentiful on top end of Powder Bowl.
See http://shastaavalanche.org/
Quote:
Originally Posted by gimpy
Oh and Bunny Flat at 6700 feet has a base of 54-103 inches, which is pretty average (ie. deep) for this time of year.
Anyone interested in a Tuesday pow lap on the south side? Looks to be a decent storm pushing thru this weekend
Any updates on how Shasta & Lassen are. We are driving back from Whister and thought it might be a good place break up the drive.
Both mountains kind of looked like ass two weeks ago as far as coverage compared to normal years. Fully skiable in the normal bowls and gullies but certainly not great. I'd get on it sooner rather than later.
I didn't ski either, just on my way north to more snow and wanted a look.
The last few weeks must have worked some magic if you guys are saying they look better.
http://shastaguides.com/2014/03/04/b...ing-mt-shasta/
My dad has been skiing the normal stuff in avy gulch hand says its been pretty good.
there was some info there.
b
A friend of mine lives in view of Shasta. She was posting up until a few weeks ago pics of the mountain, and it was up until then almost completely dry. Not sure how the new storms of late have changed things, but I wouldn't expect a whole lot from the few updates I've seen....
Maybe you'd be better off hitting up 3 sisters/Bachelor area.....
I heard differently from my buddy in Burney yesterday. That part of the state has gotten quite a bit of liquid in the last five weeks. Even though the storms have been warm, both peaks are high. I'll see if I can get some photos from my friend to post in here, but see snapt's link above.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alkares
Sure, it's below average, but both peaks' averages are enormous.
ya the elevation was what made the Shasta idea come up, but I think tomorrow we cant get there early enough to catch the pow from today before the snow gets too heavy in the afternoon. Maybe it will already be corn when i get there tomorrow.
Last couple weeks have been pretty awesome. Recent warm storms and light winds have made skiing from 7,000-12,000' excellent. Epic corn cycle this week, maybe some porn snow lurking in the right places...
up
Attachment 152296
down
Attachment 152297
More avy activity than in recent years. Large naturals and skier triggered with partial burials; heads up, especially with the warming temps this week.
Anyone been to the north or east sides yet. The snow coverage is perfect right now for some
Coquette Falls, North Gate or Brewer Creek action.
http://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/earth/
The north side access is looking especially good.
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3297/1...60c6b431_b.jpg
Pretty sure these were taken from the Fall River Mills/McArthur area, so SE-E side of Shasta and North side of Lassen. Hard to tell from the phone photos, but they give you an idea.
Shasta
Attachment 152312
Lassen
Attachment 152313
Attachment 152473Attachment 152474
Here are a few pics of our afternoon up on Shasta. At bunny the base is about 1'-2' with much more up top ~220cm where i stuck my probe in at around 9000. We stayed mostly below treeline because of the high winds and found a mix of soft windbuff, ice, and corn depending on aspect. With warm temps coming that window to ski to all the way to the car will probably be closing very early this year.
Attachment 152477
one more pic from the parking lot
^^^ Hard to tell from a distance, but it looks like there's significant slide debris above Helen. Latest SMG blog post seems to indicate that's what it is: http://shastaguides.com/2014/03/11/s...-to-mt-shasta/
Anyone have the latest? Shasta Guides saying now is the time.
What about the drive to Brewers Creek? Any beta??
Lassen Volcanic NP last weekend
Attachment 153897
Nice work getting out there to ski pow.
April 8Quote:
Originally Posted by Huckwheat
https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3799/...9c3a611b_c.jpg
That shallow snow should melt out soon.
http://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/earth/
Planning on a Shasta trip next weekend (18th-20th) if the weather is good. Tried the brewer creek route last year over memorial day and much preferred it to Avalanche gulch. Even though we got turned around by low visibility around 12k it was great to be able to skin so high up on the mountain. Would be awesome to get up there in April even if there's some extra climbing through the woods necessary. Hopefully all that snow below 6k should melt in the next week or two given that temps at 6500 are forecast to be in the 60's for the next week.
Lassen from the devastated area should be pretty good right now - there is patchy snow on the northwest entrance cam which probably means you'd find continuous snow within a short walk into the woods from the parking area.
Heading up tomorrow for an Avy gulch lap on Saturday. Will post an update on return-
Flew over this afternoon. Snow coverage looks to come down pretty low still. Attachment 154013shot shows the east and southeast
Based on the latest snow depth estimates, I'd say the Brewer Creek route looks doable now, but the climbing advisory and FS road status disagree with each other.
Climbing advisory:
Road advisory:Quote:
Currently (as of 4-10-14), vehicles can make it .6 miles past the 19 road, which leaves about 16 road miles to the trailhead.
Last year on Memorial Day we had to park before the 2nd-to-last switchback due to a few big drifts. Now it looks like you wouldn't be able to drive to the switchbacks but you could park at a point only 200vft and 1/5 mile below the switchbacks - not bad at all.Quote:
the access road is open to within 6.5 road miles of the trailhead / about 2 miles cross country to the base of the Hotlum-Bolam route.
Attachment 154034
Went to Lassen yesterday. Camped at devastated parking area. There is snow to the parking area, but it will be very thin in the next week or so. We did get back to the car without taking skis off.
On the way up, we walked up the closed part of the road for 5 minutes and went "up". We skinned 4/5ths of the way up and booted up the rest. Looks like there were 2 boot packs set. One straight up the gut, and one hikers left to sub peak. If I had the energy, I would have skied off the top about 1500-2000 vert and then traversed way skiers right to other boot pack. You could then hike about 800ft to the sub peak section and choose the best snow.
Snow was mix of winter chalk, perfect corn and heavy corn pow (we were late). Highly entertaining, and not really that hard compared to Shasta
Don't be a pussy and go tomorrow
Gonna head up to Shasta tonight and go for the summit on Sunday with two buddies. We're planning on heading to Brewer Creek unless we get some local beta advising otherwise.
Will report back with conditions!
North side of Lassen was as good as it gets on Easter Sunday. Bottom is melting out quickly, already up to a 20-30 minute hike from the Devastated parking lot. There was free park entry for the 4/20 holiday weekend as well...
Peered over the south side, road is clear just about to the Lassen Peak Trailhead...
So here's my mini-TR of our Brewer Creek expedition this past weekend. The basic beta is that we had to park quite low on the road, and there was a lot of bushwhacking to get to skinnable snow. Good climbing conditions on the route but skiing above 11k was awful since it just wasn't getting soft and most of the snow was very wind-effected. Would give it another week or two and wait for some warmer temps. Saw only one other group the entire time on the route.
We drove up from the bay on Friday night, decided to camp near Bunny Flat to sleep at 6800.
http://i.imgur.com/4nUOm4S.jpg
The next day we had breakfast and rented some gear in town, then drove out to the TH. Unfortunately the official road status report was quite accurate, we could only drive about 0.6mi on the Brewer Creek road before we hit a long section with about a foot of snow on it. We ended up parking on a side road just down from the blockage, right next to brewer creek. The elevation of the car was only 5800ft! Left the car by noon. Here's a map of where we had to park and our approach route.
http://i.imgur.com/5hR45ss.png
We walked up Brewer creek for awhile until it got too narrow/rocky, and then walked up the S side of the creek figuring it was an N facing slope that would get snowy soon.
http://i.imgur.com/ouOwLji.jpg
About and hour of bushwhacking along the creek until we hit continuous snow and switched to boots and skins. It's possible that we picked a bad place to go up and there was more snow lower somewhere else, not sure. The creek itself had snow but that low it's a deep ravine choked with boulders and deadfall. Eventually the mountain and the route came into view.
http://i.imgur.com/2Mmfk2B.jpg
It's amazing how the treeline on Shasta is so sudden - seems like it goes from dense woods to open meadows in a matter of feet. We were aiming for the rocky ridge around 9800 to camp. Got up there around 6PM and found some great rock-walled camp sites, as well as some nice clean snow for melting. The wind really came up around sunset and blew all night.
http://i.imgur.com/130gxgb.jpg
Woke up at 5AM which in retrospect was too late. We were skinning up by 6AM and the sun was already up and the wind had died down. Snow on the main H-W snowfield was very wind-hammered and inconsistent. Large wind ridges everywhere with unexpected pockets of winter snow and not very smooth at all.
http://i.imgur.com/dEoz8Bh.jpg
We made good progress up to around 12k where we crossed through a rocky patch over to the Wintun glacier. There is still a snowy patch through this. I was skinning with ski crampons up until the crossover at which point I switched to boot crampons for the rest of the route. Fatigue set in at this point and we were moving much slower. The snow in the main chute was a mix of icy, refrozen wind-textured, wind-hammered wintered snow, and pockets of powder. We stuck to the right side of the chute and made slow progress zig-zagging up it. At this point we realized that it was getting late but my buddies had never been to the summit so they really wanted to go for it.
http://i.imgur.com/qxjnhW5.jpg
Eventually we could see people on the summit waving at us which was a huge mental boost. My buddies were completely gassed when we made the summit at 2PM. Nobody left on top when we made it but still some people coming up from avy gulch.
http://i.imgur.com/zdXaQdb.jpg
No pics of skiing because it sucked and I needed my phone battery to help us get back to the car. Some of the worst skiing I've ever done in my life and a lot of survival turns. The part right off the summit was totally wind-packed but edgeable, but below that there was a long section of horrendous refrozen wind-scalloped snow. I'm not sure if this stuff ever got soft that day - definitely needs warmed temps and lower sun angles to corn up. When we got back onto the H-W snowfield things were better and we finally found corn around 11k.
Packed up camp and skied some fun low-angle corn following our skin track back to where we had started skinning. Finding the car was easier than expected since we just followed Brewer Creek down, but the downhill bushwhacking with big overnight packs was not fun. Got back to the car around 7PM and got ready for a long drive home.
We had a blast being alone on the mountain and my friends were stoked about making the summit, but the route definitely needs a bit more time for the road to melt out and the snow to corn up on the steeper higher sections. Maybe the precip coming this weekend will help smooth things up out there if it's not too windy.
Thanks for the photos and beta. Sounds like a fun time. No suncups down low yet, or what?
No suncups at all, it was smooth corn/slush until the snow ended.Quote:
Originally Posted by LightRanger
The icy wind-hammered snow above 12k skied like frozen suncups, however.
Sweet. Thanks man.Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcsim
Quality effort and good beta Arcsim.
back to the top
valley high's in the 90's this week and freezing levels up to 10.5
any conditions reports appreciated
The crowds were huge for the weekend so I'm sure there will be plenty of updates. A mate and I went up the West Face on Friday. Beautiful conditions until about 1 PM when we reached the summit ridge. I don't know if that front boundary reached NorCal sooner than predicted or if it was just local weather for the volcano, but it was intense. At least 60 mph gusts all over the top of the mountain coming from every direction and swirling around ridge. Winds seemed to keep the top 2k from any transition nearing corn. There was a nice belt in the middle and of course slush at the bottom where there was no sign of the weather going on up high other than the plume coming off the ridge line. Still continuous snow down to Bunny Flats, but without a refresh I doubt it will be there long.