...nwood...

Originally posted on Snownet.org

Friday evening found most of the RLPP (Red Lake Peak Posse) in
attendance at Jen Jackson and Roger Miller's annual Holiday Cookie
Party. We fortified ourselves with Karen and Tom's Haystacks, sampled
intimidating homemade double chocolate mocha sandwich cookies, munched
raw veggies, and quaffed beer and cider. Topos, snowparks and cookie
recipes were traded and there was much anticipation of our impending
adventure.

The following morning I treated my sugar hangover with Peet's Aged
Sumatra as I careened down 88 with Joe Henderson's "The Kicker"
(60's hard bop - nothing to do with ski aerials) blaring from the tinny speakers
of my rented Mitsubishi Lancer. About
5 miles west of Kirkwood (belly full of scrambled eggs from Hamm's
Station where the bartender was fortifying patrons' coffee with
Jameson's (no joke, I passed)) I ran into traffic. Mustering my
patience, I tried not to curse the car up ahead cruising at 40 mph.
Oddly, I noticed the distinct smell of french fries as I overtook the
lead car which turned out to be Tom Baldwin and Karen Baughman putt-putting happily along in Tom's 100% vegetable oil-powered VW Rabbit. I flashed them a peace sign and sped off.

Before someone flames me for being off topic, I better say something
about skiing. I highly recommend Red Lake Peak!

Topo and route: http://bria.nwood.org/files/redlake.jpg

Elevation Profile: http://bria.nwood.org/files/redlake_profile.JPG

We finally hit the trail at 11am under a dazzling blue sky. The route was skiable for the first mile until about 9200'. At that point we packed the skis and
scrambled up a 40 degree slope of scree and thin snow. At 9600' we
regrouped and made a goal of lunch at 10,000' on the peak just south
of the summit. John and I gained the peak about in about 20 minutes
and soon discovered that part of our group had stopped at the saddle
below and didn't look like they were going anywhere, anytime soon. I
descended to find that we'd been struck by a case of sudden-onset AMS.
It was clear (I'll spare you the details) that the victim needed to descend, so we split
the group. Jen, Karen and Tom began heading down and Roger, John and
I continued on to the Crater Lake drainage.

We encountered surprisingly good snow on the north facing slopes between
9900 and 9000'. After much wooping and holiday tele-merriment we found
ourselves on a 45 degree slope down-climbing a 6' rock section to what
promised to be 150 yards of good turning. In my haste to get to the
new pitch, I came up with the brilliant idea of "pluncking" one of
my skis into a snow pillow below...in a dart-like fashion. "A ski is not
a dart. A ski is not a dart..." I repeated as I watched my World
Piste straightline the entire run, hit a tremendous kicker and come to
rest about 400 yards below. Cursing, I proceeded to lower myself into
some sugar snow between the rocks and take off sliding in the direction
of my lost ski. Thankfully I executed a pretty decent ski pole arrest
after about 20 feet in the midst of encouraging, yet worried,
exclamations from my traveling companions. As I postholed down to my
runaway ski I had the opportunity to do some slope evaluation. There
was about 5 inches of consolidated snow (not crust) and underneath
that, at least two feet of significantly looser powder. This was between
9000-8500'. Although it had been 10? days since the last snow fall,
there was definitely some avy potential on these slopes. We didn't
hang out for long.

As we dropped below Crater Lake we quickly got into some nasty
breakable crust. Once on the fire road we generally did ok and we made
it to the car just before 5pm and darkness. On our arrival back at
the western snowpark we found our AMS victim happily munching on
potato chips. We caravaned behind Tom, mouths watering from the vege-exhaust, into South Lake Tahoe where we located burgers and beer and
all the necessary amenities to rehash our day.