Backcountry Ski Trip Report: The Good Snow Karma Continues

They say that good things come to good people. I guess that Carl, Nellie, and I have been doing something right since our good snow karma continued this past weekend. This weekend was perhaps the best skiing I’ve ever had and everything just seemed to work out right.

Our original plans were to head out Friday morning and spend Friday and Saturday night at the Pear Lake Hut in Sequoia National Park. As luck would have it, the Sierras were hit by unusually cold temperatures and heavy snows from last Monday until Sunday. As a measure of just how cold it was, the snow line reached to just inside of the park entrance, or 7,000 ft below the elevation we'd be skiing at. Due to avalanche conditions and a potential lack of visibility, we had already decided to spend the weekend doing day trips instead of heading out to the hut. When we got to the Wolverton parking lot, a ranger told us that Evan, the hut caretaker, had radioed in reporting 3 ft of new snow at the hut. There was no way any of us were up for breaking trail through that much snow. So we were happy with our decision. Plus, with this much good snow, there was no need to go all the way to the hut to get good turns.
So we set off down the trail from Wolverton. The 10" of light fluff covering the skin track told us the day was going to be great. We ended up going to "Alf's", a new area that Nellie had found earlier in the week. Just before we reached the intersection of the Pear Lake and Panther Gap Trails (bottom of the Hump), we broke off to the right heading for the ridge you would see if you were looking back as you were going up the Hump. Within 2 hours of leaving the parking lot, we had reached the top of Alf’s(8600'). Apart from a meadow on the far right portion of the ridge, all of the runs are in the trees. Moving from right to left, the runs get steeper and longer, increasing from 700' to 850' of vertical. As soon as I pointed my skis downhill, I knew that we were in for something special. The snow was thigh deep and super dry...dryer than anything I've every experienced in Utah. We were getting face shots with every turn. I had never experienced anything like this. I've skied lots of powder in my life. But this took the whole floating sensation to another level. It was so light that skiing in it was effortless.
On Saturday, we decided to ski 9975. Overnight, we had gotten another 8" of new snow. To minimize trail breaking, we followed the Pear Lake trail for as long as we could. Eventually, we had to break off. Breaking trail through 2.5' of snow, no matter how light it is, really sucks. But 4 hours after leaving the car, we finally made it to the top. We skied the north facing trees rather than the main bowl. The skiing there was even better than Alf’s. The snow was deeper and the runs were longer (900' vertical). In this case, the face shots were big enough to blind you momentarily. Luckily, the Sequoias are widely spaced and the woods are fairly clean. For Nellie and Carl (both telemarkers), the biggest surprise was that they now had to focus on when to breathe. They were getting so low in their turns that the snow would choke them if they breathed at the wrong time. We got in 3 runs on 9975 before darkness and aching thighs forced us to head out. I’d like to give a big thanks to the snowshoers who broke trail heading towards Panther Gap earlier that day. They saved us a good half hour on our trip back to the car.
On Sunday, we again skied Alf's. There was only 3" of new snow overnight. But the snow we got Friday night and Saturday had pretty much filled in our old tracks. The snow was still very good, but it had settled a bit since Friday and didn't seem quite as deep. It very well could have been just as good as Friday. But the previous 2 days, especially Saturday, had completely altered my inner sense of what constituted great powder. Runs we skied included Huck Me, Humpy’s, Tweaker, and The Bean. We got 4 runs in on Alf’s before we decided to head out.
As luck would have it, we ran into Chris (Nellie’s girlfriend) on the trail on our way out. She was coming back from some cross country skiing with a friend. Being the saint she is, Chris volunteered to run shuttle for us to allow us take a run down to Lodgepole. The run to Lodgepole is about 850’ of vertical. The first pitch was short and the trees were tight. I didn’t really get into a good rhythm. The entrance to the second pitch was a bit sketchy. There was still quite a bit of scrub brush to ski around. But after the first 15 yards, it was wonderful. There was enough snow to cover up all of the fallen trees and rocks that normally cover the pitch. Now you could just ski over them without having to worry about breaking you leg. The trees were a little bigger than at 9975 or Alf’s. Consequently it seemed that it was wider open under the canopy. I took advantage of that and just made big powder turns all the way down, enjoying my last face shots of the weekend.

All in all, it was perhaps the best weekend of skiing I’ve ever had. From the first face shot on Friday to our sweet Lodgepole run at the end of the day on Sunday, everything just seemed to go right.