January 29, 2005
Ralston Peak - Blower Pow and Blower Clouds in Ralstonia
Joe, Toby, Chris, Matt, Buddy
Looking Back up at the Unicorn Pinnacle and Ralstonia Bowl - filled with our tracks
The Sierra winter keeps on rollin'. The 28th dumped 12"+ of light and dry blower fluff on the high peaks around Tahoe. With the accompanying wind the avalanche danger was rated High on the 28th, but the update for the 29th, issued minutes before I walked out the door to pick up Toby and Buddy, was downgraded to Moderate. The day looked epic. The morning sun cast golden rays on freshly covered Sierra peaks and ridges to the west of Meyers. Toby and I were planning on doing the Ralston Peak / Echo Peak car shuttle. We left his car at the end of Wintoon and drove together in my truck up and over Echo Summit to the pull out just west of the Sierra at Tahoe turn off. Chris' truck was parked there when we arrived. Chris and Matt had skinned up the south side of Ralston under a full moon the previous evening, and were resting in a high camp above Cup Lake. Toby and I were pleased to follow their skin track, as we made good time on the going up.
The new snow sparkled in the morning sun, the open slopes offered little shade, and the east winds whipped about spindrift as we gained elevation. But the blue skies were spilling over every peak and horizon we could see, filling our souls with the power of the winter mountains.
We reached Chris and Matt as they were preparing to head on up to the summit to join us for a run down the huge and open north face of Ralston. From their camp we had a mellow and beautiful skin up to the summit. It was a bit windy, but the crystal clear views stretched all the way to Mt. Diablo to the West.
Chris and Toby on top of the lines we would come back to ski (left). A very cool vantage down towards Lover's Leap (right):
Once we reached the windy summit, we scoped our path down Ralston and up the backside of Echo, we noticed but disregarded the puffy clouds to the east. We felt our only challenge would be finding a safe line down the north side - most of the steeper aspects had slid. Toby's interest was piqued by the steepest of all lines just below the summit, it was also the only line that had not yet slid off of the summit ridge. I felt the line was just waiting to be properly loaded (i.e. a skier's weight) to go. Toby confirmed my thoughts when he stomped off a large chunk of cornice onto the slope. In a silent and almost surreal manner that was obscured by the clouds that suddenly engulfed us, the entire face broke away, leaving a freaky 18" crown at the fracture point. Besides this obvious indicator, we were now totally submerged in the belly of the clouds. We retreated to a group of trees below the ridge line to wait things out.
Toby conducting some cornice and slope safety work just before (left) and just after (right) the sudden cloud cap:
The clouds brought the cold! Toby through an extra shirt on Buddy to keep him from shivering. We hung out and waited for some blue:
After several sucker holes of blue and cold and patient waiting on ridge tops, we finally conceded that the north face and car shuttle were not going to happen. We headed back down towards Chris and Matt's camp. We eventually decided to drop into the long lines of Ralstonia Bowl. I was still a bit cautious from the cornice and crown incident. I skied a safe line into the upper bowl section and took pictures of Toby, Matt and Chris as they dropped some rad and sluffing lines off the top:
More cornice drops revealed safe snow to Toby, so he and Buddy dropped in:
Matt was next:
Chris dropped in last, sending a waterfall of sluff over the a band of rocks to his left:
We continued down the bowl in the sweet and light powder; just dry, soft and shin deep bliss. The winds were non existent on the lower elevations.
After a brief rest and bite to eat at the bottom of the bowl, we skinned up for lap #2 (picture by Chris).
Matt, Chris and I headed for the Unicorn Chute while Toby headed further up the ridge to the open slopes near the lone tree. Matt and I booted up the last little pitch of the chute to the tippy top, while Chris stayed below to film. The upper section proved to be wind affected, but soft. Matt got caught up in a bit of the crust and took a helluva fall where his legs met a shark fin of a rock. He was aching, but able to make it back to camp O.K. Chris and I gobbled up the light, dry and untracked powder in the chute. Some fun, deep and sluffy turns, non stop to the bottom. I filmed Chris as he made his descent. We both took some pictures of Toby as he and Buddy skied the huge open, untracked slopes from the lone tree to the bottom of the bowl. Pictures of me by Chris:
Booting up the upper wind affected chute. Matt's collision rock is near the lower left hand corner of the picture.
Matt booting up (Sierra at Tahoe parking lot in the background): Toby and Buddy skinning on the ridge top, above the lone tree:
Then it was time for me to ski the chute. Check out the shadows of Chris and I in the picture on the left:
Looking back up at my tracks in the "Unicorn" Chute, and our tracks in the bowl from the first lap.
Once down, I filmed Chris on his descent, then took pictures of Toby and Buddy on their long run from the top:
Toby and I were a bit late in going home, so we had to head on down. We found a few pockets of decent snow on the south face, but mainly ended up doing a lot of survival skiing in the sun crust.
So what started out as a foiled plan by unexpected summit cloud shrouding, turned into a sweet round of powder hounding in the bowl of Ralstonia!
Chris put together a very nice video of this trip as well as the trip he and Matt took the following day on Mt. Tallac. Click here to view the video. Click here to view his written trip report.