January 21, 2006
Echo Peak Pow
Joe, Toby, Brandon and Buddy
A View of the Filled in Face of the sub peak to Echo Peak - Our chute goes from Right to Left just below the summit.
Mid January has delivered in South Lake Tahoe! Two cold and over performer storms each dumped several feet in the upper elevations. They also delivered down low; keeping our snowblowers busy, while finally putting the lake level lines in play for the first time of the year. Although I spent most of the week suffering from a head cold, Toby's report of best of the year turns off of Flagpole on Friday morning, forced me to ignore my sniffling nose and pitiful state and go ski on a bluebird Saturday!
Toby and Brandon skinning on top of the first bench. Echo Bowl shined above - untracked
Buddy and a well covered Desolation. Currently the Tahoe area is 150% of normal snowpack. Cracked Crag (center of picture below and on the right) is high on my list:
Our initial objective was to ski the Halls of the Gods chutes. Upon arrival we found the wicked winds of the east had hammered them to a state of crust. I skied down to the entry to the middle chute and found glare ice glistening on both sides with a softish crust in the middle. Although very tempted, we eventually decided the perfect Echo Peak powder we observed on the skin up was where it was at.
Skier's Left Chute: Skier's Center Chute:
We skinned back up to Echo Peak where we saw a few other parties arrive on top (including Bob Larsen) as well as a group that dropped into the big chute just north of the summit. Conditions looked tasty! We headed south on the ridge past Echo Bowl and up to the top of the first peaklet south of Echo Bowl. From the top we looked down into a very nice and steep chute that I had never even considered skiing in all my years of staring up at Echo Peak. I think this year's heavy rains and plastering snow have filled in some lines that are never usually filled in enough to consider. And this line is one of them. (See the first picture on the top of this page for a photo of the peaklet and the line taken from below.) Since I had spied the line, I was granted first tracks. It was steep, it sloughed, it had a solid ice layer just above the narrow choke, and what I thought was all snow from below turned out to be an icy rime covered rock face that created a narrow choke at the bottom. The line was a challenge, but fun as hell. I took pictures of Toby skiing it after I had gone through.
From the top:
Toby and Buddy from below (too bad the light was flat):
Toby discovering the top of the icy rime covered rock face.
Unfortunately Toby's and my passages did not leave enough good snow for Brandon. He had a sweet line waiting for him on the steep trees to the north however, but I didn't get any pictures of him ripping them. The skiing and the pow were perfect the rest of the way down to the bench. From the bench down some of the best tree skiing in Tahoe delivered for us in a big way. Here's a few shots of Toby and Buddy on their way down:
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