May 15th, 2010: Virgina Lakes Corn

The Virginia Lakes Trailhead parking lot proved to be a great place to sleep, and a great place to get some spring turns. Andrew modeled great bootpacking technique as we scaled South Peak, enjoying  views of glassy Mono Lake all the way to the top.

On the High Sierra Traverse, Yu begin pointing out crazy solar phenomenon such as sun dogs and sun halos. Here he pointed out a faint sun halo around the sun, as well as a rainbow near the Black Mountain ridgeline. These are surprisingly common to see, so keep an eye out. A protected eye cause the sun is kind of bright.

Andrew ripped some great turns for only his second day on telemark gear this season.

It took until the middle of May to get some good corn snow conditions, though we weren't exactly compaining about all the April powder. Still, it was fun to harvest the Eastern Sierra corn.

Where exactly were we? Funny you should ask:

View East Side Fun 5/14-5/15 in a larger map

After the fact: It turns out Lou Dawson, epic mountaineer / backcountry skier / blogger, skied Black Mountain the day after we did. It was a quick stop on his way to skiing a little old mountain known in some circles as Denali. Check out his Virginia Lakes blog post on Wild Snow.

No comments:

Post a Comment