Mt. Baldy BC, 1/30/10

Sorry I'm late getting this post up; it's been a busy time. This day trip was so great that I still want to put a trip report up even over two weeks later.

Carie was still in Germany at this point. I still wanted to get some BC in because the snow, while plentiful, was a week old and I was sick of the crowds at resorts. Plus, I love BC skiing. I contacted Carie's friend Adam, AKA Nano-Man (because of his awesome, awesome vanity license plate) and we planned to head up to Mt. Baldy.

We managed to get on the road by 7am, unusually early considering my usual companions (*cough*). We stopped by Noah's Bagels on the way out and hit the trailhead nice and early. This was key, as it allowed us to get to the summit early enough to still ski back on nice soft snow instead of the icy crust it turns into when the sun leaves it. We get melt-thaw cycles like crazy down here in SoCal and it starts as soon as the snow is laid down. I've been caught out descending after the sun has gone down before and believe you me it's no fun at all.

The pictures will tell the rest of the story:

The day started out beautifully. We skinned up the service road, then once the long ridge traverse up to the ski hut began we put on the crampons (because 3 miles of steep traverse is not so fun on skins). This, by the way, is Adam, AKA Nano-Man. Also note snow-yucca.

The chutes at the top of the ridge. The nice thing about the Ski Hut Trail is that you're in view of what you're going to be skiing almost the entire time; it's good motivation.

When we got into the bowl and started skinning, a fog appeared almost instantly and visibility went to nothing.

There were times in the bowl when visibility was down to 20-30ft. Existing skin track was nice, but finding the ridge isn't hard in any case.

Once we hit the ridge at the top of the bowl, we were out of the cloud and the views were fantastic.

Summit celebration! I've been on this summit a few times, but I still have yet to see the damn USGS summit marker. I'll take the snow anyway.

More summit R&R. The verdict is in: skinning up the ridge is much more pleasant than cramponing up the chutes, and faster too.

The chutes above the bowl. We skied Zen Chute on the far right this time (there was more snow than in this picture). It was ~40 degrees, 15ft wide, decent snow. Easier than I expected. I was eyeing Dostie's Dare for the next trip up there, though.

Dropping in; this is the first time I've tackled any of these chutes. It's amazing how scary they look when you're standing at the top of them.

The snow at that spot was really good; about 8" of fluffy. It was wind-swept at the top and it was sun crust below.

Starting to breathe easier here; once you're out of the chute it's just a big, wide open 35 degree bowl waiting for you.

Adam dropping in.

Adam charging the Bowl. It was sort of a sun crust, but still fun to ski.

Adam took a video of me in the Bowl. At this point we'd descended about 1500' from the summit and had another 2500' of continuous descent back to the parking lot. When there's snow, this is such a great mountain.

All in all, a big day with 4000' vertical. Almost half of that is the summit, the chutes and the bowl. Then it's a long traverse down the ski hut trail which spits you back out onto the service road. Cutting the switchbacks in the service road provides a last thrill before the parking lot. Add in a trip to In 'N Out on the way back and it was a great day.

I uploaded the GPS tracking of the route (in case you missed it on my last post). The GPS is pretty sweet in that respect, letting me know exactly where I went and which switchbacks I cut on the way down.

Busy Busy!

I've been busy lately. I've been skiing like crazy, taking advantage of the short period each year when there's snow in the mountains near LA. I've got my quals sometime this week (last minute rescheduling going on) and I've been preparing for those. I found a new house and moved the stuff into it. I built up my new mountain bike. Carie gets home tomorrow! This weekend we're flying up to Bend for some skiing at Bachelor. There's a lot going on.

I should give a detailed trip report of my day trip last weekend skiing Baldy Bowl, but I just don't have time at the moment. What I do have, however, is the GPS tracking data, complete with elevation profile, courtesy of a very awesome Christmas present from Carie. It was an awesome trip and I'll post pictures sometime soon. It's a burly day trip with 4000 vertical feet, but that continuous ski all the way back down to the car is oh-so-worth it.

I also have the GPS data from the little day trip Jason, Casey and I did near Mt. Rose on Lake Tahoe on January 31st. Pretty nifty, this new toy! Next I'm going to take the raw data and manipulate it in Matlab to get the slope angle profile! Because I'm a nerd!

REI Used Gear Sale

Oh wow. I just bought a pair of Marker Baron AT bindings for $6.83. They were returned for "missing parts", which means that seven of the mounting screws are missing. They are otherwise perfect, brand new, never before mounted AT bindings normally sold for over $350 on sale.

Sometimes it pays to live in SoCal where people don't know anything about outdoor gear.

Yes, it's silly to have bought these since my current AT bindings are just fine and lighter to boot, and the direction I really want to go is lighter weight with Dynafits, but $6.83 for AT bindings? I am not going to pass that up.

So Jeannie, I'll probably want to hit up a ski shop while I'm in Tahoe and get some mounting screws for Marker bindings...

UPDATE: Blast, they're too small for my boots! Well, I have two choices now: sell them or get Carie into AT skiing.

Turn Sequence

The real purpose of this blog is of course for me to upload pictures of myself that I can then ogle at my leisure, so in that vein, here is a whole sequence. I thought it was nifty how the picture refresh rate managed to match my turn frequency almost perfectly, since I'm at the same spot in every turn in each photo. I adhere to the short, jumpy European style of turns, at least on the steeps.

Pictures from Ohio!

Awesome Ohio Skiing (to be fair, it was the last day of the season and a freak 70 degree day in the middle of a cold spell...but that doesn't excuse the lack of vert)

That is the top of the ski area as seen from the base.

The cheese on most burgers isn't this melty.

Good snowboarders kind of make passable skiers. Kind of.

The reverse is not true. Damn it's hard to stay up on near-flat ground!

Did I mention it was melty?

Air Force Museum AKA Hordes of Sexy, Sexy Planes

A10 Thunderbolt II. I want it so bad.

F22, baby!

You can blame NASA for this thing. It's actually called a "snoopy nose". It's got a 7' radar dish in the nose that they used for tracking Gemini and Apollo missions when the spacecraft didn't have a clear radio path to the U.S..

I do not fit in the F16 cockpit. At all.

Whiskey needs one of these.

It's so big!

Skiing in Ohio?

It's true, there is skiing in Ohio. One of the areas (there are more than one?!?) is only an hour's drive from Dayton, where I will be for the next two weeks. Here are some of the "features" of Mad River Mountain Ski Area, taken verbatim from it's website:

• 144 Ski-able/Ride-able acres
• 1,460-foot mountain elevation
• 300-foot vertical drop (this is a feature?!?)
  
• 2 Lodges, The Mad River Lodge and The Timberline Lodge, with kitchens and restrooms
• Indoor/outdoor picnic areas
• Learning Center
• National Ski Patrol
• NEW Beginner Terrain Park
• 7,000 gallons of water is pumped up the hill per minute, bringing you the best quality snow available

First off, I'm pretty sure most every standard definition of a "mountain" puts the lower limit at 2,000ft. Second, they only managed to harness 300ft of that, yet they have an express quad and even claim to have advanced runs:

Ok, the double blacks are terrain parks, and it's in Ohio. I'm sure the rating system is no less inflated than here in SoCal where damn near everything at Baldy was rated a double black (for the record, I always that that the second diamond was earned with the presence of couloirs, cliffs, or slopes above 40 degrees, but I guess that's just my opinion).

Also according to the website, this area gets an average annual snowfall of 36". That's thirty six inches. Per year. Total.

My intrepid labmate Dan and I feel that we just have to go to this place. It is a moral imperative.

Amazing Pow Day

Today we managed to catch the tail end of a storm and get an amazing powder day at Mt. Baldy ski area. Even better, they closed the road up to the parking lot shortly after we got there (was no problem for the Lesbaru...I don't know what everyone else's problem was), so we had the place almost entirely to ourselves. We were riding untracked powder all day long, even through the last run (on which we took almost all of these pictures). If this had been any ski area in the northwest, the powder we found would have been chop by 9:30; we had to do no hiking, no traversing, nothing. Just hop off the lift and enjoy.

We had originally intended to tour today, but all the fresh snow and storm we drove up in convinced us that it was worth it to shell out for the ski area. It was definitely well worth it. The absolute lack of lift lines allowed us to get over 20,000ft of vertical by the end of a half day. Plenty of steeps and trees to be had here, and over 1,000ft on every single run, almost all untracked pow.

The wind with the fresh snow was crazy. It was depositing it sideways in hard crusts on everything, a la Mt. Washington. Luckily the north side of every ridge was sheltered from the wind and the snow on it was perfect.

We were the first to make tracks on this. In fact, we tracked it out almost singlehandedly and like fifteen other runs just like it or better.

Yes, that is the ocean in the distance.

Seeing yucca while skiing is an experience somewhat unique to SoCal. While yucca in the summer is pointy death, in the winter it just looks sad and droopy (or as Carie impersonates them, "What is this cold shit? I'm a desert plant!").

It's steeper than it looks, and oh-so-soft.

Carie's in there somewhere. It was nothing but dry Colorado sugar for us the entire day.

People were riding the lift down for myriad reasons, ranging from "the run is too difficult" to "it's too cold". If the suckers are willing to give up such great snow, fine by me!

We also learned something today: I am much better at holding a camera while skiing than Carie is (though I still need some work). My video of Carie tearing it up on the last run down to the parking lot:


Carie's video of "me" (do not watch if you are prone to motion sickness):


Sorry, Carie, looks like you're going to have to do the extreme crazy stuff while I film and not vice-versa.

On the way down we picked up two hitch-hiking snowboarders whose truck had been plowed in and dropped them off at the nearest town, hopefully doing our good deed to appease the mighty snow demons. We also told them to enjoy it while they could because once they turned thirty and had kids it was all over. We then drove home and sat in our hot tub and ate steak. Life doesn't get much better than this.