Kirkwood, CA April 1-2, 2025

[tseeb]

After seeing the OpenSnow predictions for the first part of this week for Kirkwood on Sunday

and Monday evenings

and hearing about it from friend who was at his place here with plenty of room for me if I could get there, I drove up Tuesday morning, leaving San Jose at 5 AM. I saw snow mixed in the precip below 2000' on Ridge Rd. This is Ridge Rd/CA88 <2500'

Chain control was being moved down from DewDrop (elev. 4300') to 3.7 miles above Pine Grove (under 3K) when I went through.

I didn't arrive until 920 due to being stuck a couple of vehicles behind snowplows that were slow going up hills and ~5 stops to clear ice from wipers. But at least road was open unlike both 50 and 88 when we took lunch break after 1 and both were closed for avy control.

I skied from ~945 until 415 and counted almost 19K with a lot of deep dry powder. We took highest traverse above Kirkwood's Palisades to try to ski to friend's cabin for lunch. We passed up some beautiful untracked on the way and ended up on road a little below his place with about a 5 min walk to get there. No skiing photos taken with windchill below 0 all day at top of Cornice chair.

Wind was much stronger on previous day, eventually closing Cornice, but Wall ran all day both Mon and Tues.
Visibility was lacking on top part of The Wall until our last lap on it about 3:30. Great snow all day and got better the last few runs as edges got filled in by 10-12" that fell during day. Kirkwood ran everything besides chairs 1-4. Hoping for Backside today.

Stayed here.

As good as it was, don't believe this sNOwbrains post that has Kirkwood with deepest new snow on April at 20". That was two-day total with 7" reported Mon AM and 13" on Tues, a little over half of the OpenSnow automated predictions that got me here.

 

[tseeb]

Kirkwood, CA April 2, 2025
Friend whose place I stayed at was moving a little slow and when I got to my SUV to get out skis out, shuttle that we had not yet called went by before he got there. After texting for another one and not getting response, we decided to drive the less than a mile (in ski boots) and parked at cat crossing by Timber Creek. We hiked up to and loaded chair 7 about 920. We next went up Cornice and found higher traverses into Palisades closed. Friend wanted to return to chair 6 using road that avoids repeating chair 7 so we dropped into lightly tracked early entrance to Palisades.

Friend went too far right and found a rock that somersaulted him down the hill luckily avoiding more rocks.

Using my poles, I pulled a pole and ski off the rocks and returned them to him, then we skied the rest of the run, returning to Cornice. It wasn’t until loading the chair that he realized his phone was missing, probably falling out of unzipped jacket pocket during his tumble.

We returned to where he had fallen and did not hear anything on my first ~8 tries calling his phone. I moved down to where he’d ended up and heard his phone and with a couple more calls we located it. We skied further left, finding some good drops, then low angle untracked going to chair 7.

From top of chair 7, we skied to and rode Wall lift. We skied Eagle Bowl which had been closed for the last two days, but area where I’d found great snow in January was already sun and probably also wind-affected so I cut back to more shaded untracked before wrapping around to almost NE-facing that was mostly tracked out. We used singles line to avoid moderate line at chair 2 and went to the Backside that had been closed for two days. We took one lap on Backside skiing deep moderately tracked, very good deep powder. Line had more than doubled so after riding lift we returned to front-side skiing Boogie’s slide. I had some deep untracked turns, but went too far left and core-shot my 10 year-old powder skis on a rock before skiing very lightly tracked open shot then some trees to bottom.

We rode chair 2 twice skiing untracked, fun but not that deep, W-facing between High and Low Whiskey with a lap on Reut chair with some low angle untracked in between. There were a lot of people suffering hike into High Whiskey while we took a mostly gravity track that got us 95% of the untracked with very little effort.

My friend wanted to return to Backside so I went into lodge at base of Reut chair to refill my water and add condiments to sandwich I’d been carrying that I ate while he took a run. We went up Reut again cutting across into Waterfall where we made a few steep untracked turns before skiing the Drain. Instead of returning to Backside, we skied two, too long laps on the Wall, first time using rope that I’d never seen there before to downclimb into the top of Notch Chute.

There were a couple of deep untracked turns to right and more good lightly tracked snow on steep banks of chute. I’d waited a while for friend who took a long break to come down chute, but he had gone down steep nose behind me. View from where I took photo of Greg on rope and photo from where we took a long break.

After I cleanly skied the crux in the chute, I saw him on steep face where he’d fallen and left his poles far above him. He said snow in there was great, so after someone brought him his poles, we finished run and repeated Wall, where we saw two people butt-sliding the whole face. We did not repeat the rope, but I took a sporting entrance off the Wall that I’d spotted from chair. We repeated the nose between All The Way and Notch, ignoring the cliff area signs as cliff was filled in and snow there was very nice. Butt-sliders (center and long track) on The Wall.

We spent the rest of our day skiing Cornice chair 4x, once going further into Palisades area, but finding more exposed faces were developing re-frozen crust. I got ahead of Greg, who was taking a lot of breaks, and skied one Timber Creek lap while he caught up. Our last three Cornice laps were more direct N-facing with me once skiing Rabbit Runs to left of Sentinel still finding some deep untracked, then both of us first coming down to left of Hole in the Wall rock to left of Olympic and for our last lap skiing between Janek and Olympic with me going off very steep face between rocks, then almost going too low on Olympic to return to Timber Creek without avoiding too flat Home Run that he ended up on. We quit at 3:50 with my Garmin counting 20.7K. SkiTracks had paused earlier when my phone got to 20% battery. Drive home was a little slow (3:45) following too long line of vehicles going 40-50 mph down too many miles of mostly clear CA-88.

 

[EMSC]

We returned to where he had fallen and did not hear anything on my first ~8 tries calling his phone. I moved down to where he’d ended up and heard his phone and with a couple more calls we located it.

Talk about lucky... Keeping those pockets zipped seems easy enough.

using rope that I’d never seen there before to downclimb into the top of Notch Chute.

Looks way too similar to 2nd Notch at ABasin

while we took a mostly gravity track that got us 95% of the untracked with very little effort.

I'm all about effort savers like that.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

Nice pix, @tseeb

Talk about lucky... Keeping those pockets zipped seems easy enough.

I had a similar moment:. Jan 2008 at Jackson Hole with my wife: while doing laps on the slow-as-molasses Casper chair, I noticed that my jacket pocket was unzipped and the rental car keys were gone. For the next 25 minutes, I was expecting to pay the multi-hundred-dollar fee to get them replaced. Luckily, they'd fallen out while getting off at the top and someone saw them in the snow.

Lesson learned: I check and recheck that particular pocket throughout the day.

 

[tseeb]

I only dropped my phone skiing once. I must have missed my inside pocket on way to Montezuma lift my only time at A-Basin (17 year ago). When I noticed it missing, I went to nearby top of lift shack and it was there. But phone suffered for a while from being in the snow so I could only text and it took a while to connect with my wife who was at Silverthorne Outlets.

Photo looking into top of Notch Chute exactly two years when entrance was much easier. I asked patrol at top of Wall earlier this year if it was doable and they said only if you have crampons.