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Avalanche Rescue Course – Overview

Last Sunday I participated in a one-day avalanche rescue course offered by the Southern California National Ski Patrol. This course was specifically intended for rescue personnel who might be called upon to participate in an actual avalanche incident. Over a hundred people attended, including members of regional agencies like police and fire, and also numerous search and rescue organizations in Southern California.

The primary goal was to offer a crash course in avalanche fundamentals culminating in a mock burial and rescue walk-through. A secondary but perhaps equally important goal was to facilitate communication and coordination between these separate agencies. While I was obviously not representing a rescue agency myself (if anything, I represent the client side of the equation), I found the experience highly rewarding (more…)

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Mount Baldy – North Face & Dare Chute

Well this was a fun day! For today’s ski agenda, I thought I’d climb up Mount Baldy, give the north face a look-see, ski a piece of it if feasible, then climb back up to the summit and drop one of the Baldy Bowl Chutes.

Ordinarily when I’m feeling North Face aspirations, I like to start from the ski area and the Backbone trail, just to reduce the vertical load. But I decided to do the climb starting from the lowly Manker Flat trailhead. After all, I do have a list of big Sierra ambitions on my April agenda, and what better way is there to prepare for ultramarathon ski tours than to put a little extra hurt on the body?

First of all, today was very warm. Forgot my favorite sun hat, so I improvised to try to keep my head from getting cooked.

As for snow, it’s no longer possible to ski below the Ski Hut. That said, the bowl itself was in terrific shape: smooth, consolidated corn, just fabulous spring conditions. And very warm—so get an early start.

Any way you look at it, it’s a long way up to the summit from Manker Flat. I left skins in the car and just cramponed up with skis on my back. This is definitely less efficient than skinning, but it’s also faster.

Atop Baldy I had a snack and then snapped into my skis for a northward look. Baldy’s north face can be pure, death-ride ice, so be very cautious if you’re thinking about skiing it. Last winter, in fact, the NF never softened (as far as I know) and remained unskiable all through Spring.

Today the north face was hardly offering good skiing, but it was viable at least. Kind of a windboardy crusty mess with just enough bite to get a decent edge into the snow. Given that the north face is…well, north facing, I did dig a quick pit. Interesting stuff: about 12″ of slab on top of maybe 3-4 feet of unconsolidated (but fine-grained), sugary snow. I did get some alarmingly clean shears when I pounded on a few columns, but I couldn’t get any indication of propogation beyond.

I would have expected a denser snow pack after all the warm temps we’ve been having, but where snowpack is concerned, Baldy’s north face always seems to exist in its own separate universe. Treat it with care.

I skied about 500 vertical feet down the middle of the face—which was plenty. Climbing out meant post-holing all the way back to the summit, and that more than satisfied my desire to get a workout.

One final note just in case it’s not obvious: if you keep going down here, you’re not coming home…unless you think you can swim the San Gabriel River through the most remote part of the San Gabriel Mountains.

It felt good to be back on top of the mountain. In contrast to the north aspects, the upper south face was just primo skiing: smooth, velvety snow that invited big GS turns and even bigger smiles.

I traversed past the Girly Man Chute (which looked completely burnt: 55° and thin coverage) and Hourglass, and decided to ski Dostie’s Dare, which looked reasonable (the name, I believe, comes from former Couloir Mag publisher and anti-government radical Craig Dostie).

Dostie’s Dare was just good clean fun. Steep but not scary, on good slushy corn. Like all of the Baldy Bowl chutes, the Dare is a short but sweet line that manages to feel a whole lot bigger when you drop in for a visit.

It was now a little late in the day for the best skiing, but the open bowl down to the Ski Hut still offered a great descent. I just love that sensation of blasting over velvety spring corn snow. Sublime!

The walk from the hut down to Manker flat was painful—literally. 2000′ vertical feet is a long way to hike down in my megarides, which are about one half shell size too small for me. Great for skiing, but not so good for pounding the trail. I think I’ll bring a set of hiking boots for the lower section next time, and just carry my boots. That’s it for the report. Try to get on top of the ridge by 10:30 a.m. tomorrow for the best skiing in the Bowl. As for the north face, it would be wise to wait a little more for things to soften and consolidate.

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Intro to Avalanche Safety and Rescue

On Sunday, March 15, there will be a one-day introduction to avalanche safety and rescue class held in Wrightwood, California by the Southern California National Ski Patrol.

The class runs from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and is intended for professionals who operate in areas known for avalanche terrain, such as SAR teams and other rescue organizations. The course includes classroom and field sessions, and the fee is $15.00 (to cover course materials).

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Memory Lane: Arizona Snow Bowl

Well we’re working our way back home now, with a stopoff in Flagstaff for a few days. I’d kind of hoped to do some sort of backcountry tour out here, but a week of record temps has just nuked the snowpack.

Plus the forest service has all the key access roads closed, and I’m thinking, let’s save the big gruels for the Eastern Sierra, eh?

So how about a nice in-bounds ski day at the Arizona Snow Bowl? I started skiing the Snow Bowl in 1976, when I was just a wee one. Returning now is kind of like going back to mother’s milk: a little bizarre, but oddly reassuring.

The Snow Bowl is one of those endangered ski areas—a little too far south, without snowmaking, and perpetually embroiled in developmental disputes. The key problem as I see it is that the San Francisco Peaks are practically the only significant mountain in Northern Arizona (okay, I’m excluding a short list of others).

It’s kind of like the only good surf spot: too many people with too many different agendas feel way too possessive about this mountain. If we could pop up five or six other good-sized volcanoes in the near vicinity, I bet a lot of these ills would cure themselves. Barring that, there are no easy answers as to how to manage such a small mountain.

For me the Snow Bowl remains a shockingly effective time machine. Every time I ski there, I relive three decades of ski memories, and I find myself wondering where the years have gone. So much has changed it is often overwhelming, but making turns on this special little mountain still puts a smile on my face. Let’s hope I can keep skiing here for another 30 years!

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