Squaw Valley 2/4/17

Breakfast in the KT lift line at 8am, to the sound of explosives.  8 inches overnight, 20 inches in 24 hours.  Wind could be an issue, but it's gonna be a good day!

Well, with wind holds and control work having things shut down until 10.......I've got a little time to watch peeps in their one piece Bogners!  Squallywood.....they ain't kidding!

If there is one resort that you have to be limited to a single chair all day, Squaw and the KT-22 is where you want to be stuck.  Winds conspired against me, upper mountain didn't open, Red Dog didn't open.  Pretty much just KT-22.  Not many places you can ski one chair all day and be satisfied.

After some dicey moments early with the expert group lesson (chick from China who's only been skiing three years) after one run the instructor went in for reinforcements.  I ended up skiing the day with Errol, one of the North Face mountain guides here.  Dude has been to Placid!  He raced skier cross for the U.S. in the Calgary Olympics.  Guy can rip, and he took me plenty of places.  Banana Chute (Fingers) was a highlight, so I could say I joined the club.  No straight line hucking, but Errol appreciated my East Coast style, making turns down sections he'd never seen anyone make turns in.  Chute 75 was sublime.  Rock Garden, Dead Tree, Enchanted Forrest, Coleman's.  So many great lines.  

Not many pictures, visibility sucked today.  I did snap a shot in the Ah Chute before the phone died.



Photo doesn't do justice, but the line was a 40+ degree rock lined chute that narrowed down to a ski width.  Squaw is just incredible.

Will have some vid to post later.

JTG4eva! wrote

Errol appreciated my East Coast style, making turns down sections he'd never seen anyone make turns in.

EC ROCKS!

Nice JTG4! The terrain there is so much fun. That Tahoe/Sierra granite makes for some of the coolest ski lines.

Dude, where are you in this pic?

Where's Waldo!  I take it you snapped that yesterday?  Hope you had a good day.  The only place I know I'm NOT in that picture is in the liftline!  

My expert lesson plan worked to beyond perfection, and we skied right into the line at the thingie that checks your tickets all day.  I also got to ski with, literally, no joke, the best skier on Mountain.  At Squaw that says a LOT.  Squaw holds a skinny ski competition.  Participants don old school skinny skis and lap the KT chair as many times as possible in a set period of time, I forget how long he said.  This dude bombed KT 44 times nonstop and beat Rhalves.  He was also filming for three days in Silverado last week, and has been in a Warren Miller film.  A regular instructor wouldn't have taken me through the Fingers or the Ah Chute.  Sorry, I'll shut up, but it was a great day in less than ideal conditions.

Well, unfortunately the weather conspired against my Squaw video.  A constant snowy/sleety pelting kept even my GoPro lenses covered in a layer of wet slush.  With no visibility or time for pictures....well, my storytelling will have to suffice.  

First off, it's amazing the amount of terrain that can be accessed off of one lift.  From the KT chair, voted America's favorite chairlift and the consensus favorite chair of everyone I asked while there, you not only have the KT peak but you can traverse over to Olympic Lady.  These areas are so vast that it's hard to even see the numerous fun chutes and lines in the sea of terrain.  And all of that is just a small slice of what Squaw has to offer.  I do hope to get back some day when everything is in play.  So, first Errol and I warmed up with some steep Sierra powder turns on the Lady.  Tamara's and the Women's Downhill bookend a steeper, rockier middle pitch where Errol showed me a fun line.

The star of the day was the KT peak.  It's amazing how much fun terrain can be packed into a, relatively speaking for Sqauw, small area.  It's 1,500 feet of vertical that probably isn't that many acres, but boy does it deliver!  Errol and I started our KT exploration with the West Face Alternates.  The terrain here can be anything you want it to be, with open pitches, rocks, cliffs, trees, some of it pushing 40 degrees.  One run in the Alternates is all we'd have time for, but you could easily do two or three more in this area than fans out to skiers right towards the Fingers.  Great stuff, but the fun was just getting started.

I'll be back soon......

bumps wrote

Dude, where are you in this pic?

WTF?  This looks like a bread (or T.P.) line in '70's Russia.

Yeah, it was a mess.  Those were the two main open chairs, Exhibition and KT-22.  The Far East Express was also open, with fewer people over there.  Believe it or not, more than one person who had to wait in the KT line said it was 30 minutes.  From the look of it I'd have thought it was longer!  Even a 30 minute lift line will limit your day.  It opened at 11.  With a 30 minute wait, a 5 minute ride, and 10 minutes down its maybe 45 minutes per run.  If someone lapped that to close without lunch they got 6, maybe 7 runs.  Errol and I stopped for lunch and still got 11 runs in three hours of skiing.

So continuing our KT tour we progressed into Chute 75 Alternate, the easier entry into Chute 75, a Squaw classic and one of the more difficult named runs.  At this point Errol was still assessing a bit, figuring out where he might be able to take his student, seeing as he was on the clock.  The Alternate entrance was fun, and the chute proper was chock full of the best snow of the day.  We'd drop 75 from the top twice later, I guess the entry was keeping the masses out, but we'll get to that later.

Errol asked if I wanted to step things up a bit, and I'm always game.  Next run he took me to the Keyhole.  Moving past Chute 75 Alternate this is literally a two foot wide path of snow through a maybe 10 foot wide 'keyhole' in the towering granite.  Fortunately the pitch on the other side wasn't too extreme.  Errol was hoping this rocky area skiers right of the Rock Garden would be chock full of pow.  Unfortunately the wind had the opposite effect and it was a bit scoured.  This kind of thing would have been a problem for most west coast skiers, but this was east coast walk in the park.  Nice pitch and features to play on.

I'm gonna post before I lose this.  To be continued....

So next up it was back to Chute 75 from the top. The upper part of the run looked beautiful, the wind whipping the snow into a frenzy of constant refreshment.  Chute 75 is 40 degrees at the top, followed by a consistent 35 degrees for a thousand vertical, narrowing a bit in the middle, but not really that narrow at all.  The trickiest part is the entrance.  No mandatory huck cornice, but an intimidating lip that that has got to be, I don't know...55 or 60 degrees for maybe the first 10 feet of vertical.  Now THAT'S a headwall.  Heck, maybe it was steeper, felt fricken vertical to me, maybe it wasn't.  Needless to say, this is what keeps many people out. It's amazing how casually and effortlessly Errol just slips over the edge and drops in without hesitation or apparent thought.  My first drop here I paused, looked for a ladies entrance, and sheepishly picked my way in, no fluidity whatsoever.  Actually, with my expert lesson my entrance to this kind of terrain is something I wanted to work on, and Errol was the perfect instructor for that.  After talking about it, next run in I slipped in right behind him without hesitation.  Anywho, once we were in it was a tasty helping of firm but silky (a strange Sierra combo) powder turns.  Another nice, long, steep and soft run with some moguls starting to build at the bottom.

Our next run out to the Enchanted Forrest would find a lot of untracked Sierra Cement "powder", as the elevation was lower.   All morning it was sticky below 7,000 feet, which was fatiguing.  The Forrest was beautiful, and some nice wind ridges to play on and drop off, but HEAVY, especially for legs that were ready for lunch.  In it was.  Food, beer and my typical post lunch second wind would serve me well.

JTG4eva! wrote

Next run he took me to the Keyhole.

Does this have three skulls next to the opening?

Not that I noticed Harvey.  The "Keyhole" at Squaw isn't on any map I've seen, may just be a locals name for this particular line at Squaw.  There is a Keyhole on the map at Alpine, which is the most difficult on map trail there.  This is probably what you are referring to.

So, lunch was a shit show of long lines EVERYWHERE, but we eventually found some food, and Errol let me buy him a beer after he took the Jacket off.  Fish Tacos, hops, malt and barley nourished and back out it was.  Time for that third lap on Chute 75 to get the ski legs back, this time skied by a few more and more bumps at the bottom.

On the way up the lift I mentioned as we passed that before the day was done I supposed I needed to hit a line in the Fingers so that I could say that I did.  He kind of gave me a quizzical "really?" as I scoped out what looked like a few lines that might avoid mandatory air.  Also on the ride up I was scoping the untracked lines of McConkey's and we talked about how to get there.  I was feeling it and would have gone, but Errol didn't seem in the mood for hiking and I didn't argue, there was plenty left to do without burning the time or my legs with a hike in the rocks.  I was a bit jealous when someone finally hit it a little while later.

So our next run we head down the Nose and cut skiers right into Coleman's.  This is a chute between some rocks a little bit up from the Fingers that I thought looked interesting.  Not that I asked about it, but Errol took me there.  It's not that narrow, and it's steep but not extreme.  However, the entrance is a little icy and rocky, so maybe that's what kept people out.  Once in the chute proper it was nice fresh turns under the eyes of the lift.  From here I think Errol's plan was to cut left and catch one of the higher numbered West Face Alternates.  As we get down a little further, in the vicinity of THE big tree, Errol says the Fingers are this way if you want to take a look.  For better or worse I'd been thinking about it all day, so take a look we did.  We continued down the Nose and passed the bamboo line and cliff warnings.  At that point the terrain is wide open, but it's a steep rollover leading to the cliff face that is the Fingers proper.  Sweet turns above as it surprisingly hadn't been skied that much.  Committed, we avoid the Middle Fingers and their big mandatory airs and go left.  At the far skiers left (lift lookers right) of the Fingers is Banana Chute.  Off a lip it's maybe an 8 foot drop into a 15 foot choke, kind of in the shape of a banana, that narrows down to less than a ski width in the middle, with a mandatory hard right on the exit from the choke.  We don't talk about it much, but Errol launches the lip and straight lines through the choke with an effortless turn on the exit and rips a couple of high speed turns to the bottom of Schimmelefenning Bowl in just a few seconds.  Damn! . Me, it's gonna be a minute, but don't think too long!  No straight lining for me, thankyouverymuch.  I drop the lip and hard check a turn.  From there I work my way a little further down the choke before I jump and turn them straight through the crux.  Not the prettiest turn on the exit, but since nobody turns there there was plenty of "powder", heavy as it may be.  Legs shaking a bit from f&f (fatigue and fear), I finish off the run and catch up with Errol.  Was it pretty?  No, but my east coast billy goating skills got me through, and as Errol, a Squaw local, said....I joined 'the club'.  Over beers at the Chamois he's the one who brought it up and told his buddies that he'd never seen anyone make turns through the Banana Chute.  As shittily as I skied it, he truly meant it as a compliment, I think? . It may not have been pretty, but when FatMap's description of the Fingers says that 99.9% of skiers should never attempt them......while I think that's a bit of an overstatement, I'll take it and go hope happy having done them.

That was a highlight run, but not the last of the highlights.....

Sweet, JTG! Both the Banana Chute and apres beers at the Chamois!

Glad you got to get to the goods.

Thanks Marc! The Chamois is a cool place.  As if the skiing wasn't enough, you know it's a good day when you head for the crowded bar for another round and a nice young couple who is leaving offers you a half a pitcher of beer and their corner table in the shoulder to shoulder sardine can!

Every trip I've had out west I always seek out the most difficult terrain on the mountain.  I never  take the most extreme line, but I usually follow through on some part of it!

The deep snowpack must have helped this time around, no?

Either way, impressive!

When finishing up a earlier run Errol ran into some of his Squaw racing friends.  They told him Dead Tree was in good shape, which surprised him after what we found through Keyhole on a similar aspect.  Given the info, Dead Tree was up next.  It lived up to it's billing, with a tight entrance and very nice snow below.  Before we got too far down he cut right to check out the lower part of Rock Garden.  As we are traversing below the rock faces Errol looks up to a narrow slot through the rocks above us.  He says there is a fun, steep, tight chute up there that often holds good snow.  He kinda said we could check it out if I wanted, but there were no guarantees what kind of shape it would be in.  On the next ride up I said let's go check it out.

The run we were going to is called Ah Chute.  This was the highlight run of the day for a number of reasons.  Along with wanting to get more comfortable with super steep lip/cornice entrances, I also kind of wanted to get more comfortable in tight, rock lined chutes.  This one isn't long, but it is the kind of narrow rocky chute I've passed on other places.  Sometimes being with someone who knows the terrain makes all the difference, so no passing.  Another thing that made this a highlight run was the difficult, technical nature, and that, unlike Banana Chute, this one I skied well.  Tight, very steep entrance around a big rock at the top, followed by a 45+ degree slope that funnels into a narrow, rock lined chute, after which it opens up for some nice steep cruising.  The snow in there was really good, and it was just a great run.  This piece gives the full skinny on the Ah Chute.

https://books.google.com/books?id=Jkd_jt06SFsC&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=squaw+ah+chute&source=bl&ots=vULIJScqex&sig=NHi2M7JNUHDrL3vqLL7CsWkzFHM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwixk9mq-_zRAhVEHxoKHY0yBL8Q6AEILTAD#v=onepage&q=squaw%20ah%20chute&f=false

Dude! McConkey's is scary! That's almost too steep to turn on and it ends with an air into huge trees. Or there is a line on the far skiers left that doesn't require air? Still steep tho if I remember correctly. You must have been stoked to be in that head space.