Map of the days route:
The grand plans of one last weekend skiing in the sierra came to a halt with the forecast of precipitation and decent chances of thunder. We decided to hang around town to wait out the worse looking saturday, and then drive somewhere where there was less chances of thunder in the evening. We ended up at Lassen. There was still chances of thunder and precip in the forecast here, but only after 11am, so the goal was to be on the summit by then, and descending before it got nasty. It was a 5:15am wakeup, and we were on our skis and headed up an hour later.
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| 6am at Sulphur Works parking lot, highest spot open to vehicles on 89 at the time |
We decided to keep it more interesting, and instead of walking or biking up the road, as most people appear to do, try to ski as much as we can on the way up. The route I planned had us following the diamond peak ridgeline back to above the road switchbacks, then traversing from there directly over to lassen. Of course, topography and satellites don't quite show everything, and there was large areas with no snow due to the sulphur springs or mud pits which we needed to go around. We still found a way without taking off the skis, but it took some adventuring at times.
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| Pilot Pinnacle and little hot springs valley |
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| Navigating through the patches of melt in little hot springs valley |
Once we were through little hot springs valley, the rest of the traverse went well. Climbing up the south face of Lassen was surprisingly easy as we happened to arrive as the snow was softening up, but still holding together. Grip was great and we felt very safe and secure on the long sidehill.
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| Climbing up the south face of Lassen with the cleared parking lot below |
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| Looking up towards the summit |
The last bit of the climb to the summit, once we passed over the summer route and ended up in the southeast bowl, was a bit less optimal. Here it had a few more hours of solar exposure and was getting pretty moist and occasionally sliding out from under our feet. Interestingly, the snow here hadn't yet transformed into full corn from the previous weeks snow, it just felt like very, very wet snow.
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| Shasta in the distance from the summit of Lassen |
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| Looking northeast from the summit of Lassen |
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| Caitlin skiing towards a little chute |
For the ski down, we decided to try and do the south / southwest face. On our way up the snow was in substantially better shape and we spotted a mildly interesting looking little chute to check out in the cliff bands. Snow was still pretty decent skiing down, but it probably wouldn't be too much longer before it was a slopfest.
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| Looking back towards the face of Lassen and the little chute |
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| Butterflies everywhere!! |
The traverse back was pretty uneventful. It was a lot faster than the way up as it trended downhill, but it was not steep enough to take off our skins in the wet slow snow.
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| The winding switchbacks of 89 through Lassen Volcanic National Park |
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| Still loads of snow |
We popped out on the road for a bit, then traversed and skinned back to the ridgeline we started the day on. From there it was a straight shot back to the car.
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| Mud pit back at Sulphur Works! |
A great last day of skiing for the season!
