November 21, 2009
The Annual early turns on Elephants Hack
Joe, Toby
First real lasting storm dumped a whopping 8" of snow on Tahoe - and much of it ended up somewhere in Nevada due to the winds. But regardless of that reality, it was time to go skiing.
It has become a tradition (mainly because Carson Pass is the first place in the south shore to accumulate any real amount of snow) to do the Elephants Back tour as our first backcountry day. It's probably barely 1,000' vertical of skiing, and even that is broken up over several little descents. But it's skiing and we've been waiting long damn time for it!
Fiddling with Dynafits. Round Top looking....brown.
The Elephants Back and Buddy on the wabbit track:
Looking far gnarlier than it was:
Looking far better than it was:
Couldn't even ski to the flats...
The little ridge towards Frog Lake held something a little bit better:
And fortunately we found a couple of untracked gullies that went all the way:
Then we skied some slightly better snow from the saddle down to the Old Carson grade. After that we really abused our skis on the absent snow pack near the creek.
I wisely descended to the road by the creek. Toby chose a wilder line. A brave man he is:
Early season turns and tour were done. Now what?