April 7, 2007
Excelsior Mountain (12,446') - Gray Skies, Ripping Winds and Exceeded Expectations on Excelsior
Joe, Tony, Toby, Buddy
The typical Sierra scale is for peaks to look closer than they are and not always as steep as they look from a distance. Excelsior is different; it was closer than it appears from this vantage, but was a wee bit steeper.
Well you can't complain about a less than average Winter after two back to back monster years. But it was still a little disheartening to go down to the mighty Eastside only to see marginal coverage that looked a lot more like May or June than early April. But the disappointment did not last long as we found ourselves parked just short of the end of the Virginia Lakes Road.....it is nice to have drivable access to nearly 10,000' in early April. Our objective was Excelsior Peak, the highest peak North of Mount Conness. Excelsior is at the head of both Virginia Lakes canyon, as well as Lundy canyon. Although Moynier recommends skiing out to Lundy Lake with a car shuttle, the lack of low elevation snow made us attempt this as an in and out from Virginia Lakes. I later learned that Excelsior is a latin adjective meaning "ever upward". That's an appropriate name for this beauty.
The snowpack was not real impressive from the parking lot view:
The skin from Virginia Lake to Summit Pass was filled with skepticism. No sun, strong winds, bulletproof snow, thunderstorms forecasted......we kept on cruising never the less.
Tony at Summit Pass, looking for any shelter he could find and enjoying some rare sunshine.
I caught a glimpse of Virginia Peak where Abe and I had a marathon of a day last year, in June....and it had a lot more snow than this:
But then this first view of Excelsior lured us to continue our upward travels:
Tony above Lundy Canyon:
Mt. Scowden in the distance with some promising lines.
From whence we came. Dunderberg looking insanely dry:
We had to ski a nice little 600' - 700' shot down to the bottom of the Excelsior basin to get there. Our spirits were further lifted when we found great corn on this little snow finger. Toby:
Now Tony:
He skied right past my dropped pole like it wasn't even there! Some people are just so committed to skiing a perfect uninterrupted run every time out.
The fun little ski as seen from below. Of course we would get to climb back up that same line with weary legs to get back to Summit Pass:
We started the big ascent up Excelsior. Toby and Tony were sure booting was the way to go. I thought skinning would be faster. 15 minutes later this is the view I had of these two booters.
(I don't mind posting this shot since I've spent many days way behind both of these guys on the way up):
Buddy and I hung out at the last bench before the final headwall and enjoyed the view.
Time to go up. We all made it to the big rocks, halfway up the headwall. Toby and I booted up the ever steepening face to the summit ridge. Toby and Buddy:
The snow was 2" of nice winter buff over a firm base. It took a few kicks to get the toe of the boots punched into the snow on each step. The whippets were mandatory tools on this ascent. I was surprised the face was this steep (over 45 degrees) since it had not looked like much from our previous vantage points.
Nothing but a chicken wing for Buddy:
Tony was lapping the lower face and feeling happy he wasn't clenching his sphincter with us:
One last push to the summit ridge. This was the crux of the climb. The exposure was bigger, the slope even steeper, the base seemed even firmer....I even saw blue ice in a few shallow kick steps. But the major moment of clarity occurred for me when I had to delicately scale this hanging shelf of ice just below the top. A few very carefully planned moves were required to make sure the chunk didn't dislodge from the mountain with me attached to it. Of course it ended up being very solid, and within a minute or two I was standing on the top removing my underwear from it's own wedging. Then Toby cruised up the burly section.
You know it's steep when the tips of your skis on your pack keep hitting the uphill slope:
He's relaxed enough to throw out a smile...
After that the skiing would be cake. Well, as long as the snow was actually a little soft. Here's looking down towards our intended ski route:
Toby and his most valuable possession:
On to the summit. I tried to make a pano, but it just did not come out right. So here are a bunch of shots of the incredible surrounding mountains and basins:
Whorl, Stanton, Virginia, Matterhorn
Dana, Tioga area, Saddlebag Lake, Conness East Ridge, North Peak
Up close of Conness with Y Couloir, North Peak with the 3 great NE couloirs - 2 of which go to the top right now:
These shots are all Lundy Canyon:
North towards the Sawtooths and beyond:
Where's the summit register?
Looking down Green Creek. Sweetwater Range in the distance:
We hiked back down to our skis and switched over in the howling wind for our descent. A few rock tosses told us the snow was soft and appeared consistent. I agreed to guinea pig, while Toby took pictures. The sun was out and he took some really good pictures, so there are quite a few here.
Great snow from the top steep headwall to the choke of the chute:
Buddy bolted down the boot track:
I wish I could have captured Toby's turns on the camera. But he had it in his pocket. He skied a different side of the upper face, skied the chute and then opened it up on the apron. Here are the tracks:
We had lots of good skiing left before we had to boot back up the ridge to Summit Pass. Here's Tony:
Aiming for the little blue dot:
Toby and Buddy enjoying sweet white corn:
One last look at our lower Excelsior tracks:
Back up the ridge. It was a trying boot up that soft snow and scree filled slope. Tony topping out:
Now back down Summit Pass and past Frog Lakes. Still some good skiing left:
The original intent of the trip was to ski out and over Black Mountain. I had intended this to mean the steep gullies going down to Frog Lakes. This wasn't very feasible, but skiing down Black to Virginia Lake was very worthy of the effort. Here's Tony asking a lot from his legs above Cooney Lake:
Skiing on Black was a bit sloppy, but still very fun.
"Ready for one more run, Buddy?"
Of course he is:
Now across the (hopefully) frozen Virginia Lake. It had such a strange dark look to the ice....is that bad?
We met this fellow with the classic Nevada License Plates back at the parking lot......Could this be The Kook?
he didn't drive real well:
So for anyone interested, here are some marked up pictures showing most of our routes:
From Excelsior Summit:
Wow. What a day, and what a write up! Time to go to bed.
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