Friday, April 15, 2011

Ellery Bowl - north aspects still skiing well...

The latest Eastern Sierra mission, Tuesday 4/12/2011, yielded a super fun day of skiing variable snow, with northern aspects still clinging to their winter conditions.  We skinned up Lee Vining Creek and got up to Ellery Bowl to find some interesting winter snow.  It was a bit wind affected and slabby near the top of the bowl (11,400'), but softer, less punchy snow was available in patches in the trough of the bowl.  Due to our somewhat late timing, Western aspects that had gone through a few melt-freeze cycles were melted and skiing well.  Descending into the canyon  revealed that the heat of the day had turned what had been almost blue ice in the morning to a fast, fun gliding surface. 

Some bushwacking...

A bit of scrambling...

 Some bootpacking...

 And Mount Dana greets us at the top!


Roscoe rips some pow turns.

Molly and Roscoe stop on one of the softer patches.

Skin tracks and turns down the low angle trough of the bowl.

East Peak - The End of the Dana Plateau.

 With another storm looming, Doug and I were hoping to sneak in an ascent of the Dana Plateau and get a view before making the series of icy survival turns back to Lee Vining Canyon.  We made it in time to get a taste of some serious wind, and got out before things got ugly.  The pics and the video were taken April 6th.

Here's Doug climbing the last pitch of East Peak before getting onto the Dana Plateau.


 A west wind rips snow off the Dana Plateau onto the eastern flanks of East Peak.

This video to gives a good idea of what the conditions were like on top of the plateau:



Zeb Blais at the top of East Peak.  The North Face of Mount Gibbs is illuminated in the background.