Day 10 - Ski skining 4 Sierra Summits

It was an early morning start - 6:30am we were in the dark at the base of Mt.Tallac Skin Track. Three hours later we stood atop Mt.Tallac - it was beautiful sunrise during our climb. Within the next three hours later, we stood atop Dick's Peak and had this photo taken by an unnamed Randone' skier.

Dick's peak was the most challenging ascent. We met a non breakable crust snowpack slopes to steep to skin. Nick and I were forced to shoulder our skis and kick-step our way to the summit. We skied down to the bowl from Jack's Peak. Yu decided to head straight up the bowl, while Nick and I opted for skiing over to the shoulder and taking the ridge to the summit. Jack's Peak was the only peak that Nick and I beat Yu to the summit of. Yu had to even do a little rock climbing in his ascent. We all skied a challenging chute on the way down to Gilmore Lake. Snow conditions could have been better to say the least. We took a scenic way to Cathedral Peak nearly summiting Tallac again. The best snow was found in Cathedral Bowl. It was great to make some fun linked turns on steep terrain down to Fallen Leaf Lake. The traverse to Taylor Creek Trail Head could have been more straight forward, but when everyone is tired, hungry, and thirsty we don't communicate or think well. Nick made it out 'bout 30min before Yu and I at 7:30pm. All in all - 4 summits in 13 hours. Beautiful weather, good friends, and amazing scenery. The amount of fun terrain in Desolation Wilderness is astounding. Take a look around Lake Susie.

I went to Kirkwood for Day 11. Sebastian and I were working on bump skiing, but the heel piece for his ski broke. I spent the rest of the day skiing terrain and normal person wouldn't have gone near given the hardpack, punchy, conditions that existed that day.