Andrew has some friends who just moved to Wrightwood, so I took him up there for the day. We arrived at East ~8:15 and had no wait getting him snowboard rental gear. It was 22F when we arrived and they were blowing snow at the base of Goldrush, but they turned it off when the lift opened at 8:30. Temps have been cool by SoCal standards, topping in the upper 30's, so surfaces remain mostly packed powder from the Friday/Saturday storms totaling 2 feet. Here's Andrew's first run on Goldrush:
With the consistent surface we could really rip on the groomers, and since most of the clientele is at West I had racked up 19,200 vertical when I stopped for lunch at 11:30. I did explore a few places to make the morning more interesting. Olympic Bowl at the bottom of East was a popular mogul run when I began skiing. Coverage and surface was good despite the low elevation and no snowmaking.
There are some short tree shots dropping from Sundance into Canyon like this:
I did 3 of these. I also skied down the liftline of the seldom used Competition chair just looker's left of the high speed quad. In all of these cases I noticed that sheltered snow was still powdery, a rare occurrence in SoCal 3 days after a storm.
So after lunch I skied into Sawmill Canyon between East and West from the upper mountain beginner runs. North facing aspects retained good quality powder.
Sawmill is seriously flawed vs. Baldy/Waterman trees and sidecountry, thus generally not worth repeat efforts. The canyon floor runs on a direct south to north line, so most of the skiable fall lines are east or west exposed and soon baked by the SoCal sun. That canyon bottom is usually a PITA to ski, very narrow, with a sometime exposed creek and usually exposed vegetation.
This goes on for 400 vertical below this picture. Back in 1985 Richard insisted on following me in here and it took him 90 minutes to get out. If you ski the north facing from the top you want to traverse onto the east or west slopes before you get too low to minimize time in the canyon bottom.
By 1PM I had left the relative tranquility of East and moved over to the scene at West.
In fairness the snow is rarely this good at Mt. High, and I'm sure I was not alone in taking advantage of 2-for-1 Tuesday ticket promotion. This top-to-bottom line for West's high speed quad averaged about 5 minutes. They did not run the upper mountain Exhibition lift, which I'm skiing under here:
After 3 runs I moved to the slow but quieter Conquest chair. View from that lift:
West has numerous short and moderately steep shots, some narrow or in the trees, which complement the long cruisers on East. Backfire run on Inferno Ridge:
McKay's Glades:
I skied 7 runs total on Conquest and one more on the quad before leaving West.
Andrew's friends picked him up from East and brought him back by 3:30. I skied back to East via Sawmill Canyon. The slopes into Sawmill from West face east, and by late afternoon had acquired a thin crust over the powder. It was still mostly untracked and manageable depite being on the Recons, not my powder skis. And I managed to find a last short stash of north facing powder.
Andrew and I skied one more cruiser at East before it closed at 4PM. He boarded 17,600 despite spending 3 hours with his friends. I skied 34,300, a personal record for SoCal local skiing.
FYI Garry Klassen was at Baldy this afternoon. Chair 4 is not open as it's too thin. He skied down Nightmare at the end of the day but snow was in the awkward cruddy stage between powder and skier pack and quite heavy at the lower elevation. Snow on Thunder is excellent on the groomed but inconsistent elsewhere. There are intermittent sections of very hard snow that I did not see at Mt. High. I suspect wind as the culprit, but Garry heard a lot of glowing reports from Sunday and thinks that the powder got skied off down to the underlying hard base on some of the steeper terrain.
Samantha developed a limp in her left front leg in November and a lump in her shoulder had been growing since then. Nonetheless she was still getting around well until last Wednesday despite Feb. 11 X-rays showing likely cancer in the shoulder and her lungs. Since Wednesday I needed to carry her up/down the stairs and often room-to-room as well. She did not improve with pain meds and Sunday night she started occasional noisy breathing. She's eating here Sunday, keeping the weight off that left front leg.
Many people visited the past few days and we sadly concluded her time had come on Monday. In addition to some of the hiking pics I've posted on FTO, I've scanned many film prints pre-digital to add to a Samantha photo album here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=6 ... =879845494
With the consistent surface we could really rip on the groomers, and since most of the clientele is at West I had racked up 19,200 vertical when I stopped for lunch at 11:30. I did explore a few places to make the morning more interesting. Olympic Bowl at the bottom of East was a popular mogul run when I began skiing. Coverage and surface was good despite the low elevation and no snowmaking.
There are some short tree shots dropping from Sundance into Canyon like this:
I did 3 of these. I also skied down the liftline of the seldom used Competition chair just looker's left of the high speed quad. In all of these cases I noticed that sheltered snow was still powdery, a rare occurrence in SoCal 3 days after a storm.
So after lunch I skied into Sawmill Canyon between East and West from the upper mountain beginner runs. North facing aspects retained good quality powder.
Sawmill is seriously flawed vs. Baldy/Waterman trees and sidecountry, thus generally not worth repeat efforts. The canyon floor runs on a direct south to north line, so most of the skiable fall lines are east or west exposed and soon baked by the SoCal sun. That canyon bottom is usually a PITA to ski, very narrow, with a sometime exposed creek and usually exposed vegetation.
This goes on for 400 vertical below this picture. Back in 1985 Richard insisted on following me in here and it took him 90 minutes to get out. If you ski the north facing from the top you want to traverse onto the east or west slopes before you get too low to minimize time in the canyon bottom.
By 1PM I had left the relative tranquility of East and moved over to the scene at West.
In fairness the snow is rarely this good at Mt. High, and I'm sure I was not alone in taking advantage of 2-for-1 Tuesday ticket promotion. This top-to-bottom line for West's high speed quad averaged about 5 minutes. They did not run the upper mountain Exhibition lift, which I'm skiing under here:
After 3 runs I moved to the slow but quieter Conquest chair. View from that lift:
West has numerous short and moderately steep shots, some narrow or in the trees, which complement the long cruisers on East. Backfire run on Inferno Ridge:
McKay's Glades:
I skied 7 runs total on Conquest and one more on the quad before leaving West.
Andrew's friends picked him up from East and brought him back by 3:30. I skied back to East via Sawmill Canyon. The slopes into Sawmill from West face east, and by late afternoon had acquired a thin crust over the powder. It was still mostly untracked and manageable depite being on the Recons, not my powder skis. And I managed to find a last short stash of north facing powder.
Andrew and I skied one more cruiser at East before it closed at 4PM. He boarded 17,600 despite spending 3 hours with his friends. I skied 34,300, a personal record for SoCal local skiing.
FYI Garry Klassen was at Baldy this afternoon. Chair 4 is not open as it's too thin. He skied down Nightmare at the end of the day but snow was in the awkward cruddy stage between powder and skier pack and quite heavy at the lower elevation. Snow on Thunder is excellent on the groomed but inconsistent elsewhere. There are intermittent sections of very hard snow that I did not see at Mt. High. I suspect wind as the culprit, but Garry heard a lot of glowing reports from Sunday and thinks that the powder got skied off down to the underlying hard base on some of the steeper terrain.
Samantha developed a limp in her left front leg in November and a lump in her shoulder had been growing since then. Nonetheless she was still getting around well until last Wednesday despite Feb. 11 X-rays showing likely cancer in the shoulder and her lungs. Since Wednesday I needed to carry her up/down the stairs and often room-to-room as well. She did not improve with pain meds and Sunday night she started occasional noisy breathing. She's eating here Sunday, keeping the weight off that left front leg.
Many people visited the past few days and we sadly concluded her time had come on Monday. In addition to some of the hiking pics I've posted on FTO, I've scanned many film prints pre-digital to add to a Samantha photo album here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=6 ... =879845494
