powder is something for people on pensions up the east side, redneck basin-and-rangers, and, among the rest of us, those with disposable income. the poor people of los angeles might as well try skiing on cocaine.
talk to me about corn, corn, corn. corn is all i want, corn is all i do, corn is all i understand.
once every five years or so there's a couple good powder weeks in so cal, extending perhaps as far north as lone pine. impossible stuff, throws your timing off, has to be relearned every time, by which time it turns to cement.
if californians want to use the word powder when they mean unconsolidated accumulation let's let them. we don't want the hordes unleashed on some sort of a quest to find the real thing.
the word powder can be abused from the other side too. we suffered a dry spell, sunshine and chinook winds at a favorite area up north and were left with boilerplate ice on a slope such that the drop knee crew left a certain steep pitch under the chair to others.
one morning we received a huge dump of rib deep feathers, so i steered my leading ski toward the slope in question and was disconcerted to hear my edges clattering on the ice way down below. down i went onto a hip (later revealed to be bruised) and sustained a rather long plowing of furrow straight down the fall line.
that's not powder skiing either, it's something rarer
Pate , your so right! We here on the eastside have no idea about powder, windbuff( know what that is?) steep chutes, bluebird days, faceshots, endless backcountry,spring corn, and oh yeah perfect granite, Dude YOU ARE THE MAN!!!The rockies RULE!!!! Right on bro! Cheers!
Not powder, but funny. This last storm, after 3 inches of snow, the rangers made the highway around Wawona R3. 4wheel drives needed chains. None of our local rangers have any snow experience. The locals complained and there was a meeting that night with the rangers. I don't know what was decided, as I missed the meeting, but they took down the R3. They have a steep learning curve to attain. I would be prepared for more R3 conditions on our highway.. aack.. Hopefully they will figure it out to just ask the road crew.
Pate may disparage California "powder", but my sierra cement trained 15 yo had little trouble adapting to Colorado powder, but when my friend and his kids came out from colorado they were reduced to skiing the groomed by a mere 12" of sierra "powder".
Hate to break it to you interior range boys but indeed there is some great powder in the Sierra, it won't last long the Great Pacific will have it's way.
Over the top skiing for early season and the days are still getting shorter!!!!!!!
It is good that so many live in such ignorance. Yes, there is no powder on the East Side. You can't shred (uncrowded) pow to your hearts content and then boulder in a t-shirt or sports bra that afternoon. It is hearsay. Nothing to see here. Move along. Back to your -15 below deciduous trees to get cut off by Texans. Or sit in I-70 traffic. Where they call a six inch storm a "dump". Keep the blinders on.
Warmer storms hitting Tahoe right now Big. Powder may be present but it is likely way up high. (anyone at Tahoe now to confirm?) Cold air and more snow (powder?) after Friday and into the weekend. I'll be headed up for some backcountry powder on Monday before the warm California sun turns it to mash. (this takes about 1 hour of sun this time of year!)
This was from an amazing trip where we had excellent stabilty and were able to frequent the Kicking Horse area backcountry. The knife edge ridges there are typically wind blown making for easy hiking or skinning.
No snow. Warmer temps for the last few days with rain and more rain. I live at 6700' so it may be snowing higher, but today over the summit it was all rain.
I went to Mammoth in 2004 when you guys were getting crazy snow down there at the time and we didn't get squat. When we reached bishop the road was closed but there wasn't any highway patrol there so we chained up my buddies silverado and kept on truckin over the pass.
We could barely see, and were following the tracks of another vehicle that had decided to chance it. Both me and my buddy johnny were yelling at my buddy russ, "LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, KEEP IT IN THE CENTER!" He turns around after a couple minutes of this and yells "SHUT THE F$$K up!!"
We passed a Mammoth Lakes Sherriff, in a suv and later learned that he was going to bishop to enforce the closure because none of the Bishop squad cars had winter tires and there was a foot of snow on the ground.
We also learned the next day that there was a HUGE avalanche that buried the highway and we were lucky that we had gone through early.
We parked in the parking lot at one of the lodges and by the time we woke up the next day we could barley open the camper door. There was five feet of fresh in the parking lot.
The mountain was reporting 60" that day and they didn't get the alpine open, because it was super windy and puking, but that didn't matter because the runs were amazing. You could do the same run all day and it would still be fresh. The snow was super wind compacted and super spongey, and we didn't sink in it as much as we thought we would coming from the wet coast of BC. I've never experienced something like that back home. we have wind packed snow, but not like that.
That night we checked out town, made friends with some locals and scored some very expensive crappy party supplies :) We went to bed under the stars and the next day promised to be bluebird......
YA BUD! Praise be to ULLR indeed. He hath given generously lately. Monday was sick, Khb's was EPIC that day! Any Californians longing to ride some real pow should think about a little ROADTRIP!!!
Edit: Not that we don't get rain too..
Ryan D- Sick Vid too.. ever thought about trying to hold it behind you? would be difficult i know, or done any closup follow cam of your buds?
Thanks! That was my first time riding with the pole cam & i only did about 3 laps so a bit of an experiment for sure. I'd love to do a follow cam with it but on a day like that it's tough to want to follow anyone!! Ps did u guys hike khb's that day? That was the day red & green were closed until about 2 pm, would have been a worthy walk for sure! We hiked up 86 for awhile & i tried to convince my friends to go all the way to $1,000,000 but nobody was down, still epic everywhere else anyways! Def made about a dozen sacrifices to Ullr that day.......
Dude so many days lately.. Guess they're all starting to blur together..
Good thing I have a camera!
Monday
Tuesday
Wendsday
My buddy Kev put this together that day too Pow Pow
edit no way to embed vimeo yet. bug chris mac
Hear ya about following someone. At somepoint it becomes more about the video than the pow if you take it too far. But the video's sure look good later.
And then at the end of the day we broke up to the back of the next peak and I dropped into a gully on my sled. As soon as I did my first turn to the left I saw the windslab break. I looked down and saw a staunch wall starting to form. (A staunch wall is where the slab slides up and over the one underneath it.)
I wanted try and get away from most of the snow mass so I pinned it to the left. When I hit the staunch wall it sent me in the air and I landed on my tail on a left leaning slope, which sent me sideways and ejected me from the snowmobile.
I landed facing down and had a few seconds to think "OH F*&K!" before the wall of snow hit. It tumbled me forward and all I could see was white. I was like being in a snow washing machine. I continued the momentum of my spin and I think that helped me end up on top. When everything stopped I stuck my hand up in the air to let my buddy who was watching in horror know that I was ok.
Avalanche!
I managed to self extract and set to trudging the ten feet up to my snowmobile. It was like tunnelling. Each step I would sink up to my waist or deeper and then I would sink again with the next step.
When I finally made it up there my kill switch was broken, but my sled was only partially buried upside down. Pat asked if i was going to need help and I said yes so he skidded down the slide path and hit the staunch wall at mach shnell, but it was soft and absorbed most of his speed.
We got the sled running after we figured out that the kill switch wires needed to be apart.
I got too excited yesterday, and ignored the obvious signs of wind loading. I certainly won't make that mistake again.
I got up at five this morning to stand in line for my last fresh tracks of the season. 44 cms fell last night. Just another beautiful day @ Whistler Blackcomb.
Damn Bruce! I missed this last year! I had a cherry little 600 just sitting in my yard waiting for you! Just sold it a couple weeks ago too.. darn it.
Sleds are a tool but they can also be really fun. They are incredibly expensive though and moreso if you have lots of fun on them instead of just getting around.
Here`s a closeup of Kyle sending Jimi`s eye into some nice freshies
Let us know!