20100418

Thursday Morning Ski Club: Hidden Peak

So this week the TMSC climbed and skied Hidden Peak, located between Jake's and Rubicon.  With this summit, we've topped out on every named summit along Lake Tahoe's "West Flank".

Things got off on a rough start when I realized, in the parking lot, with my boots on and packed up - I had grabbed the wrong skins in my morning haste.  I mumbled apologies all the way back to my house, but Sander was a good sport about the hour we lost, and we joked about deja vu as we buckled our boots in same pull-out for the second time.

The ascent and descent featured crust, corn, breakable crust, and still-soft snow from the storm two days earlier.  Sander, Lucy, Charlie and I left the melted out skin track and set off on our own, heal lifters on high, picking as steep a line as we dared.  The evenly spaced old-growth forest promised a fantastic descent past their trunks a little later.  Warm temps and a bright sun had us climbing in t-shirts.  The summit featured a jumble of broken rocks to sit on, contemplate the view, and stragize the descent.

First we skied the lightly wooded north-facing bowl, making powder turns in the two day-old snow.  Charlie caught up to me covered in a white frosting that melted quickly in the sun.  Then a right turn onto a steep east-facing chute mandated some tactical skiing around pinwheels rolling down.  A quick traverse to another east shot revealed a perfect pitch past huge trees and granite knobs rising out of the snow.  Finally we started traversing left through denser trees and willow thickets before reaching the highway about 200 meters away from the car.

Statistics:  Hidden Peak, 9175'.  2700' climbed and skied.  In the map, its the unmarked summit between Peak 9269 and Jake's Peak.

Sander had the only working camera this day, and all the photos are his.