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3/17/2013 - Freel Peak Backcountry Snowboard Tour

Lou.Cassano — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:48:20 GMT

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Backcountry Snowboard Tour

Location: Freel Peak, South Lake Tahoe, CA

Date: March 17, 2013

Written: April 23, 2013

My alarm went off at 5:30, 5:45, and 6:00 before I was finally able to drag myself out of bed on Saint Patrick’s Day, not to celebrate the holiday in traditional fashion, but rather to attempt a very ambitious backcountry tour in the mountains overlooking Lake Tahoe. This plan included almost 11 miles of combined skinning, ascending, and snowboarding totaling almost 8000’ of ascent in an attempt to bag three high peaks in the Tahoe Basin. These mountains included the two highest mountains in the basin, Freel Peak standing at 10,881’ and Job’s Sister at 10,823’. They tower about 4600’ above Lake Tahoe to their Northwest, and over 6100’ above the Carson Valley to the East, where I have been greeted by them every morning I have woken up since moving here.

Their constant presence as the backdrop to my life in the Carson Valley had these giants weighing heavily on my mind by the time March rolled around, around the same time when I came to the unfortunate realization that it was increasingly unlikely that the East side of the Tahoe Basin down to the Carson Valley itself would get enough snowfall to allow me to descend from their summits back down to the Carson Valley over 6100’ below.

Thus the plan was formulated to attack these mountains from South Lake Tahoe, a markedly shorter ascent in terms of vertical feet, but more likely to be snow covered all the way to the trailhead. Based on this plan of action, I also decided to include Trimmer Peak on the agenda for the day. Trimmer is a very popular destination for the backcountry community of South Lake Tahoe; access to the Northwest slopes of Trimmer is very easy from the High Meadows Road trailhead where we also planned on beginning our tour. Additionally, two major wet slab avalanches in the 1990s carved out two adjacent slide paths on its treed Northwest slopes that look like the number 11, and thus have been known to backcountry enthusiasts as The Elevens ever since. Its location relative to the other two peaks on the docket for the day was also impeccable; Trimmer lay directly in the way of our egress from Freel Peak back to the trailhead at High Meadows Road. We planned to ascend and descend the peaks from East to West, such as to hit the peaks in order of furthest from the trailhead to closest to the trailhead. This meant that we would descend Job’s Sister, then Freel Peak, and finally Trimmer on our way back to the cars.

Thus I found myself at the trailhead at High Meadows Road, on what was shaping up to be a classic bluebird day over Lake Tahoe, preparing for the day’s activities while waiting for the remaining members of the group to arrive. The group that had signed on for this tour included three of my classmates from my AIARE Level 1 Avalanche Course. Although the group would eventually be four people, we started from the trailhead with three; Abe had gone to an Umphrey’s Mcgee concert in San Francisco the night before and was driving up to South Lake approximately two and a half hours behind the rest of us when we started our trek. He planned to meet us for the ascent of Freel Peak, opting out of Job’s Sister.

Immediately we were greeted by a lack of snow on High Meadows Road, which would serve as our access to one of the most remote and least visited areas in the Tahoe Basin. After about ¾ mile of walking in our boots, we were able to put our skins to work, although we still had to navigate patches of dirt for a time before the ascent was completely snow covered. As we continued on our uphill grind, we slowly passed Trimmer Peak to our right (South), and caught good views of The Elevens, which still appeared to be holding good snow. Already I was hoping that we would have enough time to shred them on the way back, as there was only so much daylight to go around. Unfortunately our case wasn’t being helped, as one of the members of my group was having some trouble with blisters, which significantly slowed our progress.

We finally made the turn around the backside of Trimmer Peak, into the High Meadow that sits at the foot of the North slopes of Freel Peak and Job’s Sister. At this point, our blister-laden friend decided that he did not have it in him to continue, and decided to return to the cars. Here we also got our first real view of Job’s Sister and Freel Peak. Despite having scoped these mountains from Heavenly on the previous day, the aspect from Heavenly had hidden the bareness of the West flank of Job’s Sister, up which we had planned to ascend before descending the Northeast couloir down to Star Lake.

From here on it would be myself and Liz, one of the most talented telemark skiers I’ve met, until Abe caught up to us. Abe was making up ground fairly quickly since he was unrestricted in his ascent, and it appeared that he would meet up with us sooner than we expected. Nevertheless we continued on through the High Meadow up towards the Northwest shoulder of Job’s Sister. As we continued, the length of our approach began to take a toll on Liz, particularly her heel, which she had shattered in a climbing incident not 7 months prior.

I quickly came to realize that we would not have time to hit all of the peaks on our agenda before nightfall; Liz and I discussed a course of action and decided to go directly for Freel Peak. Freel was the most important mountain on the agenda since it held the moniker of Tahoe’s Highest Peak. We altered our course slightly and made more directly toward Freel Peak, which towered over us to our Southwest, still nearly 2000’ above us.

We came out of the trees of the High Meadow into the alpine zone of Freel Peak. We were greeted by the striking Northeast face of the mountain standing above the drainage which wrapped around its impressive slopes from East to North as it flowed down into the High Meadow back toward Lake Tahoe. We were not worried about our position at the bottom of the drainage, which would have been a very dangerous place to be with elevated avalanche danger present, but the snowpack was extremely stable due to the numerous freeze-thaw cycles it had undergone. We were fortunate that the temperature was cold enough this day to maintain the stability of the snowpack and prevent possible instabilities from daytime warming.

It was apparent that this was going to be the last push of our ascent, and from the bottom of the drainage I decided to do the last section of the climb at my pace, and wait for Liz just short of the summit. After a quick half hour of skinning straight up the drainage and around onto the Northeast Face, I attained the summit ridge of Freel Peak on its Eastern side, but not after the most sketchy thirty yards of traversing over ice that I’ve ever had to do. The only thought going through my head was, “what would happen if I lost my edge here?” The answer was obvious; I would have slid back down to the bottom of the drainage over 1000’ below in an uncontrolled slide.

Luckily I did not lose my edge, and I set about to reassembling my splitboard in preparation for the final push up the rocky ridge to the summit. About a half hour later Liz reached my location and we marveled at the views as she gathered her strength. Around this time I began to think I was hearing things, as I was beginning to hear what I thought was someone singing. I decided to stand up and look down toward the drainage, the bottom of which was now hidden by a roll which defined its Western side. I was greeted by the sight of Abe making his way up our skin track singing to himself. We decided that we should wait for Abe before summiting since he had made such a valiant effort to catch up to us.

Once Abe had reached us, Liz decided to start her push to the summit since her heel was still bothering her. I opted to wait for Abe, and once he was ready we began our final push to the summit. I was puzzled to find a TV cable running down the ridgeline, but my focus was only momentarily parted from my objective.

We all topped out within a few seconds of each other, and were greeted by some of the most spectacular views my eyes have ever been witness to. We found the summit log book locked in an ammo box, but were unable to locate the USGS marker labeling the top of the mountain. We took pictures at the summit and took in the views, feeling very much accomplished.

But reality came crashing back in on us, as the numerous delays had resulted in our group summiting Freel around 5 PM PDT. We knew that we had a long descent and egress before we reached our cars, and that we would be fortunate to make it back before nightfall around 7:30 PM PDT. Trimmer was out of the question at this point, the goal now was to make it back to the cars before dark.

We descended the Northeast face of Freel and were surprised to find good snow on this first part of the descent. We regrouped on top of the roll that bordered the drainage to the West and rode a few of the chutes on the face before screaming down through the bottom of the drainage. We began to get into the trees of the High Meadow, and decided to attempt to cut as much distance out of the descent as possible instead of following our skin track back out to High Meadows Road. This turned out to be one of the worst decisions I have made in my backcountry career and set us up for the most hellish descent I have ever taken.

Almost immediately the terrain flattened out, and at these lower elevations the entire snowpack was melting, and thus made it very unsupportable. Between attempting to cross country ski on my splitboard and futile attempts at walking, I sank innumerable times in snow up to my waist and even fell into a creek bed. To top things off, we were in the throws of a dense bushwhack, just hoping for the terrain to slope downward again towards our cars. By the time we reached the point where the terrain began to descend again we were quickly losing daylight; we realized that we just needed to find the road before dark or else risk being stuck in the thick of the woods after dark.

We found the road just as we were losing the last of the sun’s light after another exhaustive and torturous bushwhack. Joyously we fell down onto it, but we knew we could not linger long with the onset of night coming quickly. We used what little daylight we had left to quickly descend as much of the road as possible. Fortunately we were able to descend all of the snow covered sections we could before it was truly pitch black. Splitboards and skis made the inevitable transition from being attached underfoot to being carried on backpacks, and headlamps were retrieved from the depths of our packs.

The sight of street lights was never more wonderful than when we finally reached our cars at the trailhead 13 hours after leaving them in the morning. Despite the problems we encountered throughout the tour, the views at the top of Freel Peak made it all worth it. This had truly been one of the most rewarding experiences during my time in Tahoe to say that I had conquered Tahoe’s Highest Peak.

-Lou Cassano, NUHOC Tahoe 2013

Trip Reports

Lou.Cassano — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:46:26 GMT

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	[[2/15/2013 - Carson Pass Overnight Backcountry Snowboard Trip]]		[[2/15/2013 - Carson Pass Overnight Backcountry Snowboard Trip]]

2/15/2013 - Carson Pass Overnight Backcountry Snowboard Trip

Lou.Cassano — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 20:51:02 GMT

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Overnight Backcountry Snowboard Trip

Location: Carson Pass, CA

Date: February 15-17, 2013

Written: April 22, 2013

This trip report is just one snippet of my experience living in Tahoe for the first half of 2013, and I hope I can find the time to write several more trip reports detailing my exploits in the Sierra Nevada.

After taking an AIARE Level 1 Avalanche Course at Kirkwood Mountain Resort over Martin Luther King weekend, I was eager to take my newly acquired knowledge into the backcountry. Although I had already done some smaller tours in the Tahoe Basin, I was hankering for a longer trip that would require winter camping. The upcoming Presidents Day holiday seemed like a perfect time to undertake an adventure of this magnitude, seeing as my season pass was blacked out for the weekend. I set about finding a few people willing to go into the wintry wilderness for a few days and an objective zone for the trip. As the time of the trip grew near, the location for the trip became clear, but the group was completely in question. Some people waivered in interest, some got sick, and others were contingent on finding rides up from San Francisco. The only constants in the days leading up to the trip were my determination to do this overnight backcountry snowboarding trip and the location; I had chosen an objective camping zone about four miles due South of Carson Pass, in between Round Top and Deadwood Peak along Summit City Creek in the Mokelumne Wilderness.

Luckily things came together in the end and I had a partner in crime for the weekend. We had met in our AIARE Level 1 Avalanche Course, and it just so happened that he was a Northeastern civil engineering graduate of the Class of 2011. He had been on a few NUHOC trips, though never really got too involved in the club. Friday night came along and I found myself waiting in the parking lot of Raley’s in South Lake Tahoe for Abe to arrive from San Francisco with a guy he had contacted on a rideshare site. As soon as he arrived, we stuffed his gear into the back of my Outback and drove the remaining 25 miles to Carson Pass like men possessed. We were fortunate to have a clear night to begin our adventure, as traffic had significantly delayed Abe’s arrival to the Tahoe Basin, and we did not begin skinning until 10 PM PST. As we emerged from the trees above Carson Pass, we were graced by a semi-moonlight view of Elephant’s Back and Round Top, between which we planned to pass to reach our objective. Kirkwood glowed off to the East, and snow cats were visible making preparations for the next day’s visitors. Originally the plan had been to reach our camp near Summit City Creek on Friday night, but it quickly became apparent as the moon set that we would be unable to make safe progress without its light. We decided to make camp in the singular copse of trees in this alpine zone near the saddle which we planned to cross in the morning.

We could not have chosen a more perfect spot to make camp. We opened our tent door to be greeted by one of the most magnificent sunrises I have ever been witness to. Unfortunately I had not slept too well since the tent was on a slight tilt. We quickly broke camp to make for our objective. We crossed over the saddle within fifteen minutes, as we had made camp not a quarter mile from it, only to get our first true taste of adventure. There is a saying that adventure doesn’t start until something goes wrong, and this was the start of our adventure. The terrain we were greeted by on the opposite side of the saddle looked nothing like the terrain I had been expecting based on my study of the topographical maps before the trip. We pulled out our map and compass only to find out that we were actually on the lower and more easterly of the two saddles along the ridge between Round Top and Elephant’s Back. We figured out that we were looking at Forestdale Divide, the connecting route between Carson Pass to the North and Ebbetts Pass further to the South in the summer. The terrain in the area looked very inviting, and we decided to make for this zone instead of trying to work the craggy ridge of Round Top to get back onto our planned route.

This ended up being the best decision on the trip. After descending a tricky rock lined chute from into the basin, we put our skins on once more to ascend up to Forestdale Divide proper. This descent made it abundantly apparent that I had over packed for this trip; my pack weighed close to 60 pounds between avalanche gear, climbing gear, camping gear, food, water, stove, extra clothing, and god knows what else. We came over a roll to find ourselves standing on a slightly raised piece of land at the bottom of a magnificent, semi cornice-rimmed bowl just to the West of Forestdale Divide, with several chutes and other terrain features interspersed along its slopes. With this view revealed to us we decided to ditch our original plans and make camp in this bowl. We were fortunate that this slightly raised area at the bottom of the bowl was populated with trees, as it allowed us to shelter our camp from the wind. We dug out an area for our tent and cooking area about two feet deep to further protect ourselves from the wind.

Once we had established our camp, we ditched all of our unneeded gear, ate a late breakfast/early lunch, and went to explore our new neighborhood. We decided to swing out lookers left of the large rocky buttress marking the eastern border of the bowl and ascend on a mellower, more protected route to minimize our risk on the terrain. As was to be expected based on the weather patterns in the area and previous observations I had made in past weeks on smaller backcountry tours, we encountered about 4-5 inches of surface facets forming on the Nortern aspects which made up the terrain in the bowl, verifying our decision to take the mellower route for the time being. We dug a snow pit on a Northern aspect when the slope kicked up to around 40 degrees about two thirds of the way to the top of our climb. Here we made a more detailed analysis of the snow conditions and discovered that the surface facets were sitting on top of an extremely stable snowpack, with no signs of weakness detectable. We made note that the facets currently sitting on the surface could form a weak layer if new snow fell on top of them.

Based on our observations of the snowpack, we decided that it would be safe for us to descend the routes in the bowl, though we decided that we should try to avoid the areas where a cornice had formed for our safety. We booted up the last pitch of the climb, and topped out on the buttress overlooking the bowl. From this new vantage point our decision to make camp in the bowl was immediately verified; the terrain we had originally planned on traversing and riding was suffering from a thin snowpack, especially the south side of Round Top which was half-bare.

After a well-deserved victory beverage, we scrambled over from the buttress to our first run, a chute on the eastern side of the bowl in the shadow of the buttress. We decided to descend the run in two sections, the first being the chute, and the second being the open lower half of the bowl after regrouping on a rise about halfway down riders left of the chute that we assessed should be safe in the unlikely case of an avalanche. I decided to go first down the chute to the rise; the faceted snow on the top of the snowpack rode like powder, and I was rewarded with soft turns down to the rise. Abe followed, and reached the rise with stoke level pinned to the max. We descended the last half of the bowl in the opposite order, and rode back into our camp with nothing but grins, hoots, and hollers from the great snow.

We decided to call it a day although we probably could have squeezed in another run; we didn’t want to be racing the sun. As the sun set we got the whisperlite running and cooked up our dinner, cans of Chef Boyardee that were on sale at Safeway. I’ve never been much of a fan of Chef Boyardee, but something between camping at around 9000’ and hiking it in on our backs made it taste divine. After scarfing down 6 cans of the stuff, we cleaned up and retreated into the tent for the evening.

That evening we decided that we would take two laps in the bowl before breaking camp and making the trek back out to Carson Pass, with a projected wake up time of 4 AM PST. However, when we were both awakened by howling winds at 3 AM PST, we decided it was probably for the best that we waited for daybreak and only take one run before egressing. This once again was a very smart decision, as we would have likely frozen between the lack of daylight, the 10 degree temperature, and undoubtedly fiercer ridgeline winds. We were rewarded at 7 AM with calm winds and blue skies.

We made quick work of the ascent, and decided that we would do more than just the single run down the bowl. We decided to descend the east facing slope which our skin track and boot ladder followed to the summit about halfway down to the beginning of our well established boot ladder. This quick run in the sunshine was enough to get the blood moving to our extremities again, and we set to our true objectives. We decided to take different lines this time; I had picked out a small chute at the prow of the ridge that formed the main bowl while Abe chose a line more or less down the center of the bowl. Abe descended first, making wide turns across the open slope to the bottom. I followed, schussing my way through the small trees on my line into the open expanse of the lower bowl.

After more self-congratulating, we broke our camp for the last time, and descended down the drainage towards the eastern side of Elephant’s Back, which would lead us back to Carson Pass. We once again donned our skins and began the ascent up to the high meadow. This proved to be a very sweaty affair, as the air temperature was a full ten degrees warmer than the previous day, and the sun was incessantly beating down upon us. We crossed the high meadow with ease; the stunning east face of Elephant’s Back towered over us on our left. After some difficulty trying to avoid two additional transitions from touring mode to ride mode and vice versa, we decided just to suck it up and descended down to Red Lake Road. Upon meeting the road, we promptly motored out the last half mile to the Carson Pass parking lot.

No sooner had we reached the parking lot that my 60 pound pack was thrown into the trunk of my car and my drenched ski socks were exchanged for a pair of flip flops. As we drove down to Kirkwood to meet Abe’s ride home we couldn’t contain our stoke from the success of the trip, and soon after I began to plan my next big backcountry tour in the Sierra Nevada.

-Lou Cassano, NUHOC Tahoe 2013

Trip Reports

Lou.Cassano — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 20:46:57 GMT

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	[[9/3/2012 - Boston Harbor Islands 2012]]		[[9/3/2012 - Boston Harbor Islands 2012]]