Blood, hippies and Easter bunnies
A bloody Saturday
I met some friends of mine outside of Bishop on Friday morning. After getting a bit discouraged by the conditions near Aspendell, Steven, Jared and I decided to finish our day early and head up toward Bloody mountain.
A leisurely start the next morning had team Jackrabbit Monsoon leaving the trail head at 8 am, a few hundred meters up the road toward Laurel Lakes. The sun was well on its way to bathing us in warm spring weather. Luckily we were able to skin continuously to the lakes, though adding a bit of extra elevation by deviating from the road early on. This did save us from the bare patches of ground on the lower part of the road though.
The snow was still fairly hard in places in the couloir, so we switched to boots and crampons about halfway up from the lakes. With the wind being inconsistent, it was sometimes T-shirt weather and sometimes not. Things were quite filled in and around 45 degrees at the steepest.
Eventually we made it to the top, with some great views! Though sharing with the one other person we saw all day was a bit of a burden. What a crowded route!
We started descending at around 2pm, about an hour past prime snow conditions, but things were still quite enjoyable.
The snow was variable on the descent, but fun throughout. Once out of the couloir, things were pretty soft. I was able to take a dip in the lower lake (barely), which was a great way to cap off the day! Despite the couple of aforementioned bare spots, we skied all the way back to the car (around 7600ft), for a total of nearly 5000 feet of skiing!
A hippie Easter
Easter brought us an even more leisurely start out of Convict lake, at 10am, where it seemed like everyone and their mothers were out for the day. Again it was quite hot, and I only wore long sleeves to protect the burnt undersides of my forearms.
Luckily (or ominously?) the mothers and their children were all skiing some east facing garbage on Mini Morrison, and we had decided to do the Hippie Chutes on mount Aggie.
Unluckily, the omen came true, as we had decided crampons were definitely not needed, but here I am barely balancing on the sides of my boots, after chopping some ski pole steps to take my skis off! Oops!
Fortunately we found some softer snow and made it to the top. After waiting around a bit, we started descending at 2pm, yet we were still an hour early. Again the snow did not disappoint.
In the drainage below Mini Morrison, we were treated to a lovely terrain park of avalanche debris, which apparently all the mothers had advised was not rad enough, and had just skied by. It was nice and soft and a ton of fun!
Again we were able to ski back to the car, but just missed Cody returning from his adventure. Too bad! After a quick splash in the lake, our day was done. A successful Easter weekend.
Hop on!
