now that our little bout with springtime is over, lets get this winter thing underway. tuesday we were skiing corn. tuesday night it started to snow. is still hasn’t really stopped.

Here is the video from all three days

wednesday toby and i hit up kirkwood both inbounds and out. once we started, each run got deeper and better and the tracks were filled between runs. it was my first day on my new lhasas, which i had mounted in a panic on the way out the door. there’s three generations of lhasas in this pic.

they seemed to work ok

toby gettin sum of the deepest turns of the day

thursday rolled around and the skies were blue for a bit. the temps stayed cold and the sun hurt nothing. nacho and i hit up the red cliffs area outside kirkwood all morning. we had it all to ourselves (sadly). here is the damage

i skied inbounds for a little bit and then we took a walk in the valley

friday myself, tahoebc, and spats hit waterhouse peak, with a second run down into hope valley. conditions were excellent up high, but sparse at the valley floor
nacho ear-waving on the peak. the steven peak ampitheatre sits behind

that’s nacho taking a leisurely stroll when tahoebc, dressed as a tree, comes out of nowhere. (unfortunately i don’t think this was the hit that’s gonna teach nacho the lesson, but it makes for a fun video anyway)

spats on the upper ridge heading down into hope valley

tahoebc on the same ridge

when saturday rolled around, we had a group of like minded individuals wanting to test out the burly base with their burly bases
we decided to hit the zone that isn’t quite kirkwood since there’s plenty to jump off mixed into relatively safe lines.
ottime drops in skiers right of the spur

and then gives a different meaning to drops in

and yet a third meaning, dropping into deeper layers

ottime drops into one of the lower lines as nacho watches on

i like how dynamic this picture is. i only had my big lens with me so i had to go with a portrait orientation.

this little section is littered with cliffs currently

another shelf below, with another set of cliffs. ottime seems set to go off this year i think

not to be outdone, schralphmacchio gets both his planks and all ten knuckles out of the snow simultaneously, a difficult feat for someone new to the art of two plankin

ottime lines up the next feature

for a much better representation of almost the exact same moment, check out this photo by schralphmacchio

ottime showing stompform

my first thought was ‘don’t drag that knuckle’! my second was ‘OMG is that your lens i see behind the hand?!’

the last day of spring was a strange one in 2012. mostly because it fell on december eleventh. the spring was filled with showers, but there were no may flowers.
there was corn though, and there was sun. and skiing is always fun

nacho and hutchski enjoying the scenery and spring like conditions

i’m the king of the mountain!

i’m the queen of the mountain!

but i still like to perform menial tasks. like building this bench

kirkwood is always closed this late in the spring. not a soul on the mountain

fly nacho fly

hutchski enjoying the corn

rock solid form

but then she punched a puppy in the face OMGEEE!

so he’s gonna karate her!

kickin it, enjoying the spring before lap 2

going big, or at least medium

spazzes are everywhere in the spring. here’s two

last run of the spring

big fun!

then it snowed
and snowed
and snowed

woke up this morning with plans to hike with hutchski, nacho and two other doggies out to elephant back, or something simple like that. it was gloomy and we were hoping for corn conditions. i think we were playing cancellation chicken where neither one of us wanted to be the one to call it, but either one of us would have been ok with the decision. still, we loaded up the car and headed west, noting how things looked a tad less dark that way.
at carson pass, we put 3 out of 4 boots on before deciding it was too cold, windy, and rock hard to warrant heading out into the flat light. we opted to keep going to danberg in the valley. that way we could just take a low angle descent if everything is frozen solid. before we got to kirkwood, the open field to the left of the cliffs behind caples lake caught our eye. easy approach. appeared to bathed in what we were calling sunlight. low angle enough we couldn’t get in trouble.
these are taz (front and center) and yogi

and this is where we went. you already know nacho and hutchski

and in case you forgot. taz and yogi

our first run was a tad firm, and then not, and then firm again. the views were consistent though

there’s the crew. “phew. we’re done, right?”

no way man. the fun has just begun.

at least for me. for hutchski, the work had just begun

fkna

i was having a good day, but then my thong got all bunched up on one side. i hate that!

hutchski going for it

but she hooks the branch. i didn’t see that coming.

crews were on hand immediately to check on her

my turn to ski the trees

then hutchski showing off for caples lake

just a hair sooner and this pic would be soooo money.

and then it was time to go. but first some sp-icy crusty occasional pow back to the lake

and back the way we came

a bad day skiing is better than a good day doing just about anything else. but this was a good day skiing

the bleak winter of 11-12 has left us with little in the way of choices for getting turns in the late summer months. we hit up dunderberg the first time in august and now we were back again to check off september.

this time we had to take al subie so we could only make it to alien head lake rather than all the way to jacks glacier.

even so, the hike to the hidden glacier was a short one. we were making turns in no time.
hutchski on hidden (samurai) glacier

then it was time for a break by the lake. and by break i mean taking the shovel and knocking down the sun cups enough to make an in run to the lake. and a beer

nacho was very excited

the in run was still bumpy and it was hard to get enough speed

fortunately i was able to make it to where i could stand. i made it further on my subsequent tries, but never all the way across.

a short but rocky hike back brought us above alien head lake with a view of al subie

after my failed attempts in the water, i was ready to get some dry land under my skis

admiring my tracks 😉

then it was down south to yosemite. hutch had actually visited with her parents weeks before and stayed in the same row of tent cabins that the folks that caught the hanta virus had stayed

we went for some climbing, but only ended up bouldering

and sightseeing, the locals were unimpressed

gymnasticcy stuff

picture taking

and jumping off things

anyone in Tahoe knows the season isn’t over until at least memorial day, when we get our memorial day storm. this year would be no different, but most of tahoe has no base left, so volcano skiing would be our plan to reap the benefits. plans were made, shifts were covered, cars were packed
the playas
hutchy, a new mag

powdork (not so new)

longshortlong (don’t know why short is in there, he requires 2 pics!) and schralphmacchio

nickie

and of course our sponsored athlete nacho, who was a stowaway on this trip due to park regulations

as we set off from tahoe, the skies opened. they wouldn’t shut for several days

hutchy and i rolled into lassen at 3 on friday, 3 hours late. we figured we missed hooking up with the crew and elected to sightsee. in the bumpass hell lot we ran into dookey67, who was also 3 hours late. so we sightskied instead on diamond peak

diamond peak has a huge rock outcropping on top. hutchy likes to climb such things. i did a poor job taking this pic cuz it doesn’t show the size of the rock

this is what it looks like from our campsite

the exposure poma

nacho, who use to play left field for the giants, shows off a little

then it was time to ski
powdork

hutchy

dookey

back at camp, we didn’t want to set up because of the never ending snow/graupel downpour. so we hopped in the car and drove
to red bluff, where we found tips, a local dive bar

day 2 was still socked in, so we drove up to bumpass hell to see what we could

and ran into this guy (and his mail order bride) stuck in the snowbank. we drove all this way with our shovels, so we may as well put them to use

we had spotted some fun lines before the top which would also let me get off the road quickly before anyone saw our stowaway, who was not allowed on the snow within the park

on ski heil peak

it was kind of deepish

in the middle of this chute i had to take off my skis and wax them. then it was fun

as a result, they were heading down when we were heading up

our camp was above a river fed by sulfur hot springs

beers were drank, longshortlong even brought some home made limoncello

the stars even appeared for a little bit

and sunday dawned bluebird

hutchy and i had to be back at work in tahoe at 4, so we started up earlier than the rest. still late by most standards though

we took a route that included some unnecessary climbing to above the upper lot

but also allowed us to ski down

nacho and hutchy play chicken

then it was up lassen proper, but we didn’t have time to make the peak.
hutchy

nacho

me

hutchy gets tubed on the way out

before declaring victory

despite driving fast and taking chances, we did not make it to work on time.

i’m guessing schralph will have some pictures and stories to add