Well, it’s the middle of April and I’ve finally gotten out to do some more backcountry skiing. This has been a pretty dismal snow year – I’ve been rock climbing more than skiing…
A couple weeks ago, after being thwarted from a climbing weekend in Bishop due to a fatal accident on Hwy 395 Brent and I decided to ski Waterhouse Peak at Luther pass – Brent’s first backcountry ski! The snow conditions weren’t great and it was really warm so we climbed up to a false summit about 80% of the way to the top and skied back down the way we came since neither of us really new the mountain. A fun day!
Yesterday, we got a few inches of snow at lake level so Ondine and I decided we should head up Waterhouse this morning to take advantage of this rare occurrence (and get in shape for a bigger trip we’re hoping to do this weekend).
Thursday, April 12, 2018 Distance: 3.4 miles Duration: 2 hours, 42 minutes, and 14 seconds Average Speed: 1.2 mph Minimum Elevation: 7633 feet Maximum Elevation: 9432 feet Total climb: 1857 feet Total descent: 1834 feet
The first thing we noticed was that even at over 7,000ft the snow wasn’t as deep as we’d hoped. Ondine “broke trail” through about 5 inches of new snow and we nearly turned back but decided to tough it out, hoping for better conditions up high.
Indeed, the higher we went the better (and deeper) the snow got. Maybe this wasn’t a bad idea after all!
We reached the top at 10:40am and hung out for about ten minutes in the beautiful morning. We also thumbed through the summit register that went back to at least 2002 – always fun to read.
The descent was decent. The snow wasn’t as deep as we’d have liked but considering the year we’ve had it was still much better than we had expected!