Backcountry - Lassen Peak

Getting ready.

We didn’t get around to skiing Lassen Peak last year due to too many landscaping commitments. This year, I—and the boys at TTSA—have been prodding Nancy to go up to Shasta with us, so we looked at Lassen as good training for that big mountain up north.

Lassen Peak is a three hour drive from Truckee. We made it to the south parking lot around 10 a.m., a late start, but hey, we’re middle-aged. At least we got out of bed and made the drive.

Just one more hill, Honey!

The Lassen Peak trailhead is at 8500’, and the mountain tops out at 10,450’. The hike up is pretty easy, and if you drive up to Lassen as soon as they clear the road (usually sometime in May) there are numerous lines to ski on all four sides of the mountain.

About 1000’ up the trail, with Brokeoff Mountain in the background.

We were busy in May, but we came up anyway, not expecting much. The Sierras had a lousy snow year, but the north and east sides of Lassen still have a lot of snow.

About 500’ from the top.

The trail has a zillion signs warning hikers not to cause erosion by going off-trail. There’s also a new sign this year that states if the trail cutting continues, the park may result to guided hikes only. Huh?

I realize that erosion is a problem, but Lassen is just a big pile of gravel. It’s not as if verdant meadows of mountain flowers are being trampled. I can’t tell if the park’s concern is that erosion results in more trail repair or it’s simply aesthetics, but I think they’re overreacting.

Our next goal, the Big Mama—Shasta.

We came to ski Lassen, not climb it, so we skipped clambering up the last two hundred feet to the summit.

We went back in the rocks to eat lunch, not realizing that it’s also the same spot where hikers go to take a dump. The specks in the photo aren’t from dirt on the lens; they’re flies.

Nancy in the big north bowl.

The last two times I’ve been to Lassen, the snow was mush and mung. You usually have to get an early start or luck into some cold temps to get good skiing.

Since we emphatically did not get an early start and it was also a warm day, I was expecting the worst. However, the snow was absolutely fantastic, smooth corn for the entire run.

The snow becomes very consolidated this late in the year and we’d had some cold nights lately, so we lucked out.

Bret taking a more direct line, with Shasta up north.

Nancy traversed out to the northeast ridge to ski the big, wide bowl to the right.

I skied a line straight off the summit plateau, then began working right.

Getting turns lower down.

I was stunned at how good the snow was. Nice corn, smooth, nothing punchy, just amazing.

Bret, after traversing right. Upper turns are in the middle of the picture.

The last time I skied snow this good on Lassen was five years ago, with Andy and Arlo. We drove up on a frigid day and skied the west side, because it was the only snow we could get an edge in. We camped out, hoping for warmer temps, and the next day the north side was so good that we skied it twice.

Nancy getting some corn halfway down.

There’s several options for skiing the north side:

1. If you have more than one car, ski down to the road and shuttle, which gives you 4000’ of skiing for 2000’ of hiking.
2. Same as option 1, only hitchhike back.
3. Hike back up the north bowl, gain the northeast ridge, and pick a line from there.
4. Skin/hike around the east side back to the south parking lot.

The snow stayed great all the way down.

The bottom of the north side was burned out, so skiing to the road would involve a half-mile hike and a ride from a kindly tourist.

Rando baby.

Hiking back up is fairly easy, but the snow up top was firmish and we didn’t have crampons and I was skiing with my girlfriend and I didn’t want to sleep on the couch.

So, we chose the worst option, traversing around the east side.

Skinning/hiking around the east side takes less than an hour with a good snowpack. Unfortunately, we don’t have a good snowpack.

Starting the traverse around the east side.

We could only skin a short distance, and then had to start hiking.

Normally, I’m not that alert to rockfall. However, we saw a fresh crater in the snow, followed by another crater eighty feet past it, followed by another crater forty feet past that, followed by a series of divots where a rock three to four feet in diameter had finally come to rest.

A large rock flying eighty feet across a low-angle snowfield is pretty impressive. After that, I started paying attention.

Just one more hill, Honey!.

The hike was a series of moraines, manzanita and snow gullies. Traversing volcanic rock fields is not a whole lot of fun.

Uh… make that two more hills. Hiking the last pitch below the southeast snowfield.

The scramble around the east side added another thousand feet of elevation to our hike. It would have been so much easier to just hike back up the north bowl and ski out the southeast snowfield.

Getting one last turn in before the parking lot.

Nancy was not happy with my navigational skills, but I suspect that’s a gender thing.

It all seems worth it, now that it’s over.

It took us a lot longer than we wanted to get back, but a cold beverage and getting those boots off eased the pain.

Now, if we can just get to the Polka Dot in Quincy before it closes…