Kirkwood, CA 1/6/2016

tseeb

Well-known member
For a while I wondered if going to KIrkwood on Wednesday was a mistake as it was only one beginner and two not very steep intermediate chairs 1, 5 and 7 at 10 AM due to wind, although I heard 6 and 11 had loaded earlier. Instead of driving the 35 miles S to Kirkwood where they claimed 10" new, I could have driven a little further N to Northstar where they claimed 12". But it takes a lot longer as a lot of it is 2-lane road with no passing and I could have gotten stuck behind someone with chains doing 20 mph as I did last month.

I had four low-angle run, with powder along edges and in trees on chair 5. There was a moderate line, but singles moved very quickly. At about 11 AM, they re-opened chair 11 which goes a little higher and serves some advanced runs. I went lookers left three times and found barely tracked, deep snow, but it somewhat wind affected near the top where it is exposed. I kept going farther skier's right to get more untracked then took a run looker's right into Waterfall where I had some lightly tracked snow. Then I went into trees to left past where anyone had been.

Kirkwood added chair 2 a little later, but I didn't want to go there as I would not be able to see if anything else opened from there. They started loading chairs 6 and 10, which go to the top of the mountain just before noon. I did four laps on the Wall before taking a break. It was not open the previous day so you were skiing more than the 10" new. The first run I had an untracked steep right side entrance to Notch Chute, but the choke had some avalanche debris so I cut left into untracked trees. My next three laps I took a little hike into Wagon Wheel where I didn't cross many tracks during the upper half on the run and also found some untracked in low-angle and steep trees before getting to the Drain.
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After a break from 1:30-2, I move to hi-speed chair 6 to take a warm-up run on Sentinel. At the top, I was letting the strong wind push me towards the road to the run when I hit a 3-4 wind drift that I did not see. I lost a ski and somersaulted into the soft snow and lost my momentum. I was going to ski the more or less groomed Sentinel run to warm up, but ended up in deeper than expected tracked snow on the side and lost a ski and went down about 20 feet below losing the other ski in the fall. Luckily, I saw the first ski moving through the deep snow until it finally flipped and stopped 100 below me.

I then took two nearly 100% gravity traverses into the near Palisades. After watching one of the guys I followed on the traverse fall on his first turn, I made some turns in deepest untracked of the day, getting my first face shot of the season on my first turn. I only found one rock and a lot more untracked skiing to the bottom of Hole-in-the-Wall chair. My fourth time up chair 6, the route to Sentinel was closed so I skied Monte Wolf where ridge was untracked, but windswept. I finished the day with one more lap on the Wall at 4 pm with 22.5K and found a lot of it had been filled by the snow that fell heavily most of the day.
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While I could have gotten away with one more day at Kirkwood (and they reported 6" more overnight), I could tell my wife wanted me home. Since I had already closed up the cabin in the morning in case I did not return and had two good powder days, I drove home. It snowed heavily until I got to about 3800' where it no longer was sticking to the road., but there was still some snow mixed in down to about 3000'.
 
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