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| Tioga Pass snow conditions, May 10-11 2008 |
| Here is a collection of the various snow conditions around the Pass, weekend May 10 to 11, 2008
Coke Chute: May 10, fins in the couloir, apron and lower slopes ok skiing
Powerhouse: May 11, cold and windy Sunday, cloud over the Dana Plateau and high winds made for frozen snow.
False White: Saturday: sloppy skiing in afternoon, slope looks like the Face of 3 at Mammoth Mountain due to concentrated skier use.
Somewhere along False White/White Mtn; good skiing in couloirs, soft snow mid day, no sluffs in steep terrain.
Ridge between Gaylor and False White. Decent skiing, no fins, some sluffing in steep rollovers.
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| Southern Sierra, Mt. Williamson Horn Couloir |
| Many thanks to Andrew Lewicky of SierraDescents.com for his account and photos of a ski descent off Mt. Williamson.
Yesterday I skied the south-facing couloir between Mt. Williamson's east and west horns, accessed via the Bairs Creek Cirque.
I had hoped that the snow in the couloir would be somewhat smooth, given all the radiation it receives. I didn't expect conditions in the Cirque to be any good.
The opposite proved to be true: the cirque and headwall couloir, while hardly great, offered enough patches of smooth snow here and there to make skiing possible (though you'd have to be a maniac to climb lower Bairs approach to get to it).
South facing aspects, including the horn couloir-south, were abominable, with mature shark fins up to 3' deep.
To ski it, I kind of improvised a technique of finding the berm of a runnel, and riding the berm down kind of like a kid at a terrain park.
I think this concludes my ski season -- good riddance to those sun cups and fins!!
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