April 30, 2005
Jobs Sister - A Half Day trip way back there with a little assist from the Heave
Joe, Toby
The Three Tallest Peaks in the Tahoe Basin - Jobs, Jobs Sister and Freel Peak as viewed from Monument Peak (Heavenly). Our ascent route is in red and our descent is in blue.
Toby and I had wanted to ski Freel and Jobs Sister via lift access from Heavenly all winter long. We never were able to pull it off, until the last day the Heavenly bullwheels turned. Starting with a chairlift ride from a resort made for a proper California (late) start of 9:00 AM; not exactly the early start Toby and I usually have to do for our family's sake. To add more urgency to the day, I had to be in costume at a dance show for the girls no later than 3:00 PM later that afternoon. So with our plans made, we dropped off a car at High Meadows, parked the other car at the Heave, rode three chairlifts to the top of Monument Peak, skied and climbed to the top of the Beach and scoped our intended route (see above). Then we pushed off onto a corn run of velvet facing Southeast towards Monument Pass.
Once down at the pass, our route became a little obscured by the trees and lack of views towards Freel and Jobs Sister. Needless to say we knew we had a long and gradual traverse along the approximate route of the Tahoe Rim Trail. The snow was still cold and firm in the morning shade of the trees. This allowed us to make great time traversing quickly towards our objective. We eventually reached a point where we could catch a glimpse of the barren slopes of Freel through the trees, and we knew it was time to start skinning upwards. The skinning was low angle and easy as we followed the ridge just west of Star Lake towards the rocky face of Jobs Sister. At the shoulder of the large peak we switched to booting for the final stretch up the windblown and barren rocky scree slopes leading to the summit.
Our objective from the shoulder, we booted up the right skyline, our descent line is not visible - Jobs Sister (10,823').
We reached the summit approximately 3 hours after ducking the rope at Heavenly. The views from the summit were vast, the puffy clouds in the sky had preserved the snow perfectly, the surroundings were ones of complete solitude.....we savored our well earned lofty perch for a few minutes before we arose to ski:
We looked for a line dropping directly off the summit through the cliffs towards the big bowl to the North. None of these lines appeared to go through, so we headed towards the main entry to the big huge open bowl leading down to Star Lake. The high elevation of Jobs Sister rewarded us with soft and winteresque porn snow for the top 700'. No where else in Tahoe could snow like this be found on April 30th! Below the porn, the snow transitioned seamlessly to perfect Spring corn snow - oh yeah.
Toby took the honors:
I skied my own ridiculously good untouched line to the right of Toby's. We stopped halfway down to catch our breath and enjoy the moment and surroundings. Jobs Sister is a unique peak to Tahoe. It has the rugged and lofty feel of an Eastern High Sierra peak. The granite spires, large open bowls and long rolling runout all reminded me of being somewhere further south than Tahoe.
Toby in the Lower Bowl:
Finally we bottomed out at Star Lake. We were quite thrilled with the adventure we had just partaken in, but it was far from over. It was now nearing 1:15 PM and I had to be in costume at the High School in 1 hour and 45 minutes. With haste, we made good time striding across the frozen surface of Star Lake. The meandering downhill ski towards High Meadows was pretty slow due to the softening snow and low angle. Route finding was again a bit of a challenge. Finally we reached the top of the High Meadow grade where the Cold Creek Downhill mountain bike trail takes off. More slogging and poor route finding eventually led us to the Powerlines. We followed the lines to the road and proceeded to ski over every surface besides snow imaginable to man as we lost elevation. I was in grave danger of missing Clara's father daughter dance, so we really had no option other than drytooling and pine needle surfing as required. I did manage to get a couple of pictures of Toby mastering these skills:
At 2:30 we reached the truck at High Meadows. Toby helped a brother out by foresaking the car shuttle and leaving his truck at the Heave for he and Aimee to pick up later. I bolted home, changed quickly, ate a few bites on the road.....and at 3:00 PM, I was doing this!:
Here's a view of our day's work from the top of Jobs Sister. Our ascent is in red, our descent is in blue:
It turns out we descended about 6,000' w/ only about 2,800' of climbing....that Heavenly pass came in handy. Of the 6,000' of descent, about 3,500' were fall line whoopin'-it-up-turning w/ the other 2,500' consisting of traversing, slogging, forest service road surviving, pine needle gliding and creek cross splashing.
Jobs Sister from Heavenly was a great time. And now we have a couple new objectives on the horizon. One is to ski Heavenly to Freel to Trimmer to High Meadows. The other is to ski all three Carson Range peaks in one day - Heavenly to Freel to Jobs Sister to Jobs to Gardnerville. This will take the perfect day with a huge low elevation snow pack that lets us drain it all the way to the Carson Valley. Stay tuned!