Eastern Sierras 2010-11: The Eternal Stoke

[Slaag Master]

looks great on the eastern front

[h-atlas]

I skied Solstice and Ellery on Saturday. It was super good - dropped into Solstice at 11:15 and wouldn't have wanted to drop in much later. Might even go for earlier with this coming weekend's temps. Skied down to the frozen lake and did a mixture of skiing/booting over to the quick hike up to the plateau... that part probably took 1 hr, skied down Ellery at 1pm at we could've skied much later if need be. It was smooth corn if you avoided the obvious debris. Here are some photos:
view down solstice


skiing


beta on glacier canyon


beta on both couloir on dana


ellery


video

[mcski]

awesome. any tips for car camping areas? pm if needed.

[Adamantium]

Thanks for the info on Dana. I was thinking about trying for Solstice this coming Sunday. Is there enough snow still on the west face of Mt. Dana to skin up most of the way from the road, or is the canyon a better approach at this point?

[madturtle]

http://www.forestcamping.com/dow/pacficsw/inyo.htm

Any of the lee vining or june lake ones would work for tioga pass but saddle bag lake and sawmill probably aren't accessible yet.

or http://www.recreation.gov/camping/ma...=CampgroundMap

or pick a random dirt road off 395 and drive to a flat, scenic, or convenient spot. Finding one with all three is up to you

[CaliKid]

Thanks for the info, looks like still enough coverage to have fun. Gameplan at this point is to drive from the city Friday, carcamp, then ski Solstice or Dana Sat morning.

[h-atlas]

Skinned all the way to Solstice from the Pass with a few short walking over rocks sections.

[SchralphMacchio]

Skinned all the way to Solstice from the Pass with a few short walking over rocks sections.

Around Tioga Lake I take it? Wow that is still really filled in. I wonder if Eastside will be any less of a zoo than Shasta this weekend! Well done anyway, dropping Solstice any time of year, let alone after the Solstice is a special thing

[biggsie]

@ CaliKid. Hoping to do the same. Leaving SF at noon. Crossing my fingers that we'll get a campsite at either Tioga or Ellery Lake. First one that gets there should grab two spots? We'll be in a gray wago.

[CaliKid]

@Biggsie - Unfortunately not able to leave the city till 7 or 8pm so probably not worth it. Gonna try to car camp in hotel Explorer for a few hours around Lee Vining. Shoot me a PM

[mcski]

I'm on a similar plan. Car camp and hit the pass tomorrow am.

[SchralphMacchio]

thinking about bailing Shasta due to winds and hitting Bloody this weekend. Anyone else gonna be down there?

[jimw]

Some split boarders did S-chute and said it was firmer than they'd like.

Hey, you must have been the tall guy I was talking to at the lake? S-chute was OK. Snow looked better than it was. I think it was more the sun cups and runnels that were the issue. Damn it's crazy how much has melted in the past couple weeks. Then again, it is the end of June!

Some skier rag-dolled down the big rock lookers right, under the cornice in Ellery Bowl. Apparently lost a ski traversing in. I think he was hurt pretty bad as evidenced by the ambulance I saw going south on 395. Careful out there!

Some clarification on this. We had been hanging out by the lake chilling for about an hour. Around 3 PM we saw 3 skiiers drop in on lookers *left* (not right) of the bowl, where the bootpack is. They were taking the traverse from there over to the middle of the bowl, where there's less rock exposure below. Then we saw one of the skiiers slip on the traverse, and she started sliding, lost her skis, and slid straight down to the bottom of the bowl, going straight over a large rock. The guy in our party who saw this was watching through binoculars. We thought for sure this was going to be a rescue situation.

We weren't quite sure what to do... we thought about jamming up there, but that would have taken at least an hour. I had my Spot, which we could have used, or sent someone down to call 911... but we weren't totally sure of the situation yet. So we decided to watch for a while through the binoculars to see if they really did need help. We honked the horn to get their attention. We could see the injured person at least moving, though they weren't standing initially. One guy was with her, and the other guy started hiking back up the bootpack to get her skis. We figured if she was badly injured, they would have sent down one of the guys for help, or put a pair of skis in an X, or *something*. But from what we could see it didn't look like they were acting like it was an emergency situation. Sure enough, after the other guy retrieved the skis, we saw the injured person standing, and eventually all 3 of them started skiing down. We could not believe she was skiing after that fall. We went to meet them at the bridge to see if they needed any help. They didn't say too much, but indicated that they were OK. All 3, and especially the woman who fell, were clearly shaken up over the whole experience... understandably so! They were very lucky it wasn't worse. They packed up in their car and drove off, so I don't know if the ambulance mentioned above was related, but we did see the woman wrapping her hand before leaving so I'm sure there were at least some surface injuries.

We were standing in the exact spot they dropped in a couple hours earlier, and the entrance was still a little hard. And it was clear there was a lot of exposure because of the rocks below. The top is filled in a little differently this year due to all the snow. It's steeper and not as smooth, and the cornices are blocking some of the typical entrances. People generally seem think of Ellery bowl as kind of a walk in the park, but this was a reminder that things can go wrong quickly. I'm glad it wasn't worse in this case.

Some other random notes:

- Stuff is melting quickly. We rode Ellery on Sun; the video h-atlas posted was from Sat. The part at 4:51 in that video that was still barely snow-covered on Sat, was a 5-foot patch of dry ground on Sun.

- Personally, if I were going out there this weekend, I'd probably boot up the backside of Dana to Solstice, drop that, head right at the bottom, boot up Dana and drop that. Then maybe up to the plateau and Ellery on the way out. That would probably be the best bet for conditions and timing. I'd be tempted to even leave the skins in the car. You're going to be hiking early, and hopefully everything will be frozen at that point, which means frozen suncups, and that ain't no fun to skin on. Maybe depends how comfy your boots are for hiking. For snowboarders I'd say boot for sure... but bring crampons! 2 weeks ago a snowboarder slipped while booting up lower Glacier Canyon from Tioga lake, and broke his femur.

- Schraph, we saw that crown too. I have pic below. It is right where all the cornice debris is falling off, and is also right above a huge pile of rock that's heating up.

- Apparently Saddlebag road is clear to the lake, but isn't open to vehicle traffic yet. Might be open this weekend, dunno. But since the road is clear... perfect time for the bike approach! The Conness zone probably has some of the better snow conditions around.

Here are some pics from last weekend.

Sat, a big crew of splitboarders (plus a token skiier) drove out to Bloody. Still a lot of snow out there considering it's the end of June. Turns out it wasn't that smooth though. Quite a few butt slides that day. Still fun to get out there though. And cool to know that the van can make it out on that road! Y-Not chute still barely went, so some of us climbed up that way. Most folks descended the main bowl into the main Bloody chute. I took the hanging snowfield (which was the best snow out there), into the Y-Not, which was pretty much survival jump turns on crappy snow. Fun outing nonetheless and cool to be able to finally get into that line, crazy it's still doable so late.

View from the road. Y-Not is calling me...



Base of Y-Not. Nipple deep pow yo! Or not.



The chute was pretty narrow, with just a board-width hallway connecting it to the hanging snowfield at the top. I'm sure that's gone now.





Red Slate



Token skiier drops in



Buffy above the rollover, crew down below



My, uh, "tracks" in the Y-Not. Yeah, I can't see them either. Must have something to do with the not-quite-buttery-smooth texture in there.



Chinese downhill on the apron



Chillin back at the cars



Yay for the 4wd van!

[jimw]

Sun we went to Tioga. Gimpy said Powerhouse was 99% rideable the weekend before, but now the lower section is pretty much done.



Ellery still holding



A little dry skinning at the start of bread run...



... which led to some character-building skinning on frozen suncups



I say, got suncups??



Views













These guys were out



Initially we were planning on checking out Kidney, but we started a little later than intended, and were kinda skeptical of conditions we might find over there after the skin up. So we just chilled on the plateau for a while, checking out various chutes by Powerhouse/3rd Pillar. You could still drop some of those now, but you'd be climbing back out.

Main Powerhouse



Sucker hole on Powerhouse fin



3rd Pillar still goes, but the rock in the choke is starting to show



3rd Pillar/Powerhouse



We decided we were lazy and didn't want to climb back up anything, so we just went over to Ellery. Here's the view from the top of the lookers left edge of the bowl. This is right where the skiier entered and slipped. She went down the obvious line just left of center and lined up with the debris pile. You can see the rocks in the path.



Close-up of debris pile. Some of those chunks are probably refrigerator sized.



Looking over to lookers right of the bowl, where all the cornices are dropping.



Scoping out S chute



In the gut



Chillin at the lake. We actually swam in it... for like 5 seconds!!



View from below of the area where the skiier fell, lookers left edge of the bowl. They're actually in this pic though too small to tell.



Another view of that crown, at the bottom middle of the bowl just above where that big rock band starts that extends to lookers right.

[SchralphMacchio]

Thanks jim, photos from bloody actually don't look too bumpy? But maybe Saddlebag is a better bet for the weekend ...

[jimw]

Trust me, it was bumpy. Pretty much unanimous agreement from the crew on that one. But you should go out there and verify for yourself! Don't forget the high-clearance 4wd!

[liketoride]

Does anyone have any beta on North Peak? Is it ridable, worth going back there for it? Keep in mind I love a good suffer fest, but sometimes I don't like to suffer too much.

[BGnight]

Yesterday I rode super smooth, good corn on the eastside....of SHASTA! (8k continuous without having to unstrap once to end of run. Needless to say the last 3k wasn't "riding". Just snow travel on a board)
I think I'm now done with this snow sliding business.

[BGnight]

Fuck it, better this thread than the tahoe thread. Sue me. It's in CA and it's the east side.





I rode line that angles down right off peak. You can see tracks from two guys I met that rode the route proper the day before. I stopped < 200 feet from summit cuz I was bonking and outta water and the boot pack went to the top of my line anyway. 8100 feet was enough hiking at that point. The top of main route was sorta manky/punchy. The line I did was NE facing and was money. Plus it accesses the very top of Hot tuna proper and that was super good corn and untouched too. If 5 ppl hadn't put in the booter the day before I wouldn't have made it. It was off and on unconsolidated the whole way up. Fucking warm too!




Hotlum crevasses


Looking down on Hotlum glacier:

[ilikecandy]

kind of a longshot but worth a try-anyone have any beta on the u-notch? even just what normal season mid-june conditions are like? wouldnt mind not skiing it, probably not possible now, more thinking about summitting

[hutash]

I haven't been in the U-notch itself, but is still pretty filled in with snow in mid-June. I was just on the mountaineer's route on Whitney, and it was filled in to nearly the top. Snow was pretty crappy to ski, but somebody had a couple days prior judging by the tracts. Not sure that helps.

[213]

U-notch should have plenty of snow to shred. The main concern given the warm temps is rock fall obliterating the primary zones of fun shredding (and being a hazard for climbing). V-notch has the same issues. T-bolt may be an option if you hike up and find the U/V wrecked. But if climbing is your main goal, no worries, just be at the notch by sunrise and you should be $$$$$$$$!

Example of main rockfall trajectories (stolen from other site, Aug 2010)

[~mikey b]

looks like I have Sat. Sun, Mon to play - could leave as early as Fri eve - Sonora Pass will be good

[gimpy]

mighty fine line brooks and i sure am not opposed to seeing it here since there is no shastafari thread and well timed for me. the snow looks pretty sick for july. didya happen to glean any info on clearcreek??? asin if the route is melted out at all or if the rd goes to the th. anybody down to send clear creek on sat or sun gimme a shout as i cant finagle a partner this weekend.

is saddlebag rd open yet????

[jimw]

is saddlebag rd open yet????

It's definitely plowed all the way, so the bike mission is a go for sure. Dunno if it's open to vehicles yet. There are some pics from from the Conness zone from Sat here.