I toured up in the Mammoth Lakes Basin today hoping to find some decent tree skiing and enjoy some seldom seen winter weather.
From the trailhead the snow is very thin. The Tamarack folks have been moving snow and grooming, but it's barely hanging in there. Lots of ice too.
Along the northeast side of Lake Mary the road is bare for a hundred yards or so.
But between Lake Mary Store and the top of Coldwater the snowpack increases significantly with surprisingly good coverage in the trees.
Above Sky Meadow the trees were rimed and the cloud deck was low. Great winter scenery we haven't seen enough of this year.
The thin crusts at and below treeline have faceted out pretty well but the thicker crusts in the open terrain persist. Skiing the glades in the forest was real good on the sugar snow!
Hopefully we'll get a little more winter here soon!
1 comment:
Hey, I don't know if your intended audience is some random guy from Michigan, but I just wanted to say thanks for this post, and all your backcountry skiing adventure tales. I'm an old fart and not a very good skier, so I won't be visiting most of your slopes. But I did get out to the Eastern Sierra for the first time last spring, and one of the beautiful tours I did was around much of the terrain you describe here. Looking at maps and Googling stuff gave me your site in the results, and I read most of your posts last year. I know it is a lot of work to post all that, but I really enjoyed it and learned from it. I hope the snow will continue to accumulate and you'll be getting out like that again soon, and posting pictures. I'm planning a trip to Alberta this spring, but maybe I'll get back to the Sierra Nevada some day.
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