Saddlebag Lake

I still felt the need to get up in the mountains on skis, so I joined my friend Ann and we headed up to the Saddlebag Lake area near Tioga Pass.

There's good coverage and snow cup formation is minimal. Here Ann skins up with Mt Conness (left back) and North Peak (right) behind her.

Neither of us were particularly goal oriented, so we ended up cruising back to the crest north of North Peak on the left side of this pic.

Nice views of the couloirs on North Peak on the way up.

Looking back to Saddlebag Lake, just left of center distant.

Shepard's Crest

Good corn run from the crest with only a little punchy snow towards the bottom.

Lots of thawing lakes and tarns with nice turquoise color.

Ann found some knee deep turqouise!

We rallied and skinned up the center bowl in the pic above, then hiked out the ridge and skied the chute just left of the two rocky knobs on the skyline.

On the short dry land hike along the ridge.

The chute skied pretty well although we were later than ideal.

Good fun!
Last ski of the year?
We'll see.