March 22, 2008
Chasing corn from Tallac to Fallen Leaf
Joe, Toby
A Summit view that never gets old.
Not much new snow since February here in Tahoe. But when the powder turns hard, the California sun usually works it's magic and turns slopes of pow into fields of corn. A deep packed baked by highs in the 50's and then refrozen nightly with lows in the 20's make for ideal corn harvesting conditions. I hadn't been up Tallac since 2006(!) so I was due to return. We left a truck at Fallen Leaf Lake and then started skinning up corkscrew from Spring Creek. A unique car shuttle was on, ensuring sunny South facing slopes the whole way. Here we go!
Summit views:
The Crag with Pyramid beyond:
We bypassed a wintry direct entry to the Cross in favor of lines less skied. Neither Toby or I had skied the chute just East of the main South Bowl line. And since we both have to look at it from Elks Club every time we drive down the road, we needed to get it done. Here's Toby buttering some tracks in.
We skied down to a bench just above Cathedral Lake. I chilled on a sunny rock trying to soak up some energy from the sun and give my cold ravaged body a rest. Toby took a mini lap, then we headed up to the top of Cathedral Bowl. We followed the routed of the Summer trail, cresting out to find more great views of fabulous lines:
Crag Junior - which we skied on 3/1/08
And Crag Senior. Hard to say how clean that line off the top / right is this year:
Agassiz and Price looks so good you'd be willing to go snow blind just to stare.
JACKS!!!
On our way to Cathedral Peak and Boxcar, we spied this hidden gem of a cirque that seldom sees action.
Mmmm Hmmmm.
But we were headed Southward. Toby and Buddy prepping for the descent.
We're headed 2,000' straight down to Stanford Camp on the shore of lovely Fallen Leaf Lake.
And they're rollin'
What we skied was the face to skier's right of Boxcar. It was the best corn run I've had in a couple years.
Velvet Perfection:
The line starts at the highest snow point and goes just right of the big cliffs. If you look VERY closely you can see my tracks down low where I got cliffed out. Oops!
Return to Backcountry Skiing Page