January 13, 2007
Bitter Cold Powder Hunting on Becker
Joe and Chris
Doing our best to keep our tips....I mean chins up during the January dry spell - Chris above Echo Lakes
Super cold temperatures, with no new snow. This is what it must feel like to live in the Midwest. But Chris and I were confident we could come up with a few remnant soft spots from the GREAT storm of January 4. My truck mirror read -6 degrees in Meyers at 7:00 AM.
Chris and I drove in a little ways on the Echo Lakes road, parked, bundled up and started our chilly trek:
Heading up towards Becker. At the top of this knob those Northeast winds chapped any bare skin. I don't know what the wind chill was but it felt like -500 degrees when we stood in it for too long. The picture looks kind of warm actually. How deceiving.
We had planned on going to Talking Mountain (below), but skins don't stick to splitboards too well in sub zero temperatures. So we dropped into a fun NW facing line off of Becker.
A nice view of the Sierra at Tahoe backcountry I frequent with the Buddy Werner kids:
We found some decent old crystallized powder on the lower slopes.
Chris:
Even sent a few of those crystals into the air:
We hacked a few turns on the firm and crusty lower bowl that we unfortunately captured on film. So no pictures of that. But we did find some good turns on the lower sloped leading down to Echo Lakes.
Chris:
Why you don't try to walk off the West side of Flagpole:
Sitting on 1' of ice over 100' of water on Echo Lake:
Please send fresh snow soon. We are starving and don't know how much longer we can hold on.
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