Tahoe Regional Planning Authority reverses decison about North Bowl Expansions

North Bowl Trees Saved -

This week during a re-hearing the Tahoe Regional Planning Authority reversed its decison to allow Heavenly to cut the North Bowl old growth to allow for a high speed chairlift. As of now, they are leaving it up to Heavenly to choose between Alternative 4A- The kinked lift, and Alternative 5 - Replace existing lifts with high speed quads. This is a victory in the Tahoe Basin, and an amazing demonstration of how impactful community organizing and grass roots efforts can be. Not only was the board meeting room completley packed with concerned local citizens yesterday, but they had to set up an overflow room with video-conferencing - and the overflow room was also standing room only. Pretty amazing!

Poster takes third place in College of Science contest

Avalanche Terrain Poster takes third -

Last semester Tim Weigel and I took a class from Gary Raines of the USGS about modeling using GIS. We learned about weights of evidence, fuzzy logic, and artificial neural networks. Tim and I did a project in collaboration with Randall Osterhuber at the Central Sierra Snow Laboratory in which we used weights of evidence to model avalanche terrain in watersheds adjacent to two watersheds that had been heavily studied.

We entered the poster that we made for class in the 2007 College of Science poster competion and took third place. I'm planning on giving a talk at the Nevada GIS conference at South Lake Tahoe next month about this project. Below is a snapshot of the poster. Click on the image for a larger view. I intend to update the image with a better one sometime in the near future.

Climbing at Sugarloaf and River Rock

Climbing at Sugarloaf and River Rock -

The last couple of weekends I've discovered new climbing spots here in the Reno/Tahoe area. The first was Sugarloaf, which lies just west of Lover's Leap along Highway 50. Sugarloaf is an old school crag climbed by the likes of Warren Harding in the 1950s. It features an incredible variety of chimneys, cracks, and off-widths and has a surprisingly Yosemite-like feel. The area is southfacing and is great for early season climbing.

The second locale is River Rock. River Rock is located just outside of Verdi about 2 miles past the California border. Although it is a relatively small area it has great routes, quality rock, and is located in a nice spot near the Truckee River. More information about River Rock can be found at the following website:
http://harter-climbing.aci.net/riv.html

Last Climb at Lee Vining

Spring Ice at Lee Vining Canyon -

Gwen Linde and I returned to Lee Vining Canyon for one last ice climb of the season. It turns out that the ice was very wet and mushy, although still leadable, particularly in the morning. Great for hard toproping! However, if you choose lead make sure you do it in the morning before the ice gets too mushy. My guess is that there won't be a bit of ice left by the end of March.

Return to Lee Vining Canyon

Facing the Bard Head On -

This was my third week climbing ice at Lee Vining Canyon with Gwen Linde. After leading single pitches on the Chouinard Wall and the Bard Harrington Wall. We decided it was time to climb all 3 or 4 pitches of Bard Harrington. The ice in the canyon is still in excellent condition. It's north facing exposure ensures that minimal sun reaches the wall. Nonetheless, it is still recommended to get an early start and avoid the left hand side during the afternoon. Gwen and I witnessed several large icicles detach around 3 pm two weeks ago.

We ended up splitting the route into four pitches, although we probably could have completed it in three. Luckily for me it meant splitting the crux pitch into two manageable pitches. The two middle pitches probably went at about WI 3+ or 4-, which was perfect for me.

Top photo: Bard Harrington Wall on the left, Main Wall in the center (kind of hard to see), and Chouinard Wall on the far right, which appears to be the favorite for mountaineering clubs.

Bottom photo: I'm following the first pitch on Bard Harrington.

Save the North Bowl Trees at Heavenly

Save the North Bowl Trees at Heavenly -

Heavenly has some great tree skiing, including the North Bowl! However, these old growth trees are threatened by the resort, which plans on building a high speed chairlift and cutting three to four new runs. That may not sound like much, but it will totally change the character of the place and impact the lake's clarity. Furthermore, local groups have recommended and support a "kinked" chairlift, similar to those that they have in Colorado. A kinked chairlift would allow Heavenly to build the lift without sacrificing the trees, lake clarity, slope stability, wildlife habitat, and good old fashioned adventurous skiing. I urge all of you to take a look at the following websites to get more information. I think that we can have a win-win situation, but the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and Vail Resorts need to be convinced.

http://northbowl.blogspot.com/
http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/article/20070223/Opinion/102230069

Ice Climbing in Lee Vining Canyon -

I got my first taste of Sierra ice this winter. This past weekend I teemed up with Gwen Linde, who is a PhD student in geology at UNR, and went down to climb California's best ice, Lee Vining Canyon. Lee Vining is just outside the east entrance to Yosemite National Park. It is in a spectacular location down amidst a deep canyon. Most of the ice flows are on shady north-facing slopes, so they stay relatively cool throughout the winter. It turned out that the ice was perfect and the approach was superb. Gwen and I both led WI3 routes on Chouinard Wall and we did a bit of top roping too. With such a poor snow season and such great ice I guess it is a no brainer.

Lean Winter Ski Conditions -

This year I got my season ski pass for Heavenly Ski Resort down in South Lake Tahoe. Tim Weigel, Shasta Ferranto and myself have teemed up to make up the tele mafia at Heavenly. There really aren't too many other tele skiers on the mountain so we're probably quite noticeable. I think this has been one of the leanest snow years for the Sierra Nevada on record. Certainly it is way below last year. As a result most of the skiing is pretty restricted to groomed runs with snowmaking, and this February! Actually, we did score a few decent tree shots but that was just after New Years.

My goal for the season is to get comfortable skiing moguls on tele skis. The rationale is that moguls will force me to be quick on my feet as well as force me to ski the fall line. Hopefully these two traits will come in handy in the woods and on the steeps. To date I've clocked 11 ski days this season, although some days were on alpine skis and not every day has been a full day.

Climbing at the Leap -

Since moving to Reno I've adopted Lover's Leap as my new home crag. After years of climbing at places such as Grapefruit Rocks and Angel Rocks in Fairbanks, Alaska I'm relieved and excited to have such high quality trad climbing around me.

For those of you not familiar with Lover's Leap it is one of the great traditional climbing areas of California. It is virtually a miniature Yosemite, apart from the fact that there are numerous granitic dikes that add features to the rock and make hard routes much more reasonable.

Newton DeBardeleben and I have been coming back here for three weekends in a row. This past weekend we were back to climb Travelers Buttress, a 4 pitch 5.9 crack climb on the Main Wall. The offwidth 5.9 pitch shut us down so we opted for the much more moderate classic next door, Corrugation Corner. Corrugation Corner is perhaps the most amazing 5.7 climb I've ever done. Newton believes it to be the steepest 5.7 he has done. We still aim to come back and finish Travelers Buttress, but perhaps with a little bit of offwidth training first.

-Tom

Mount Whitney -

One of the first mountains that I wanted to climb upon moving to Reno was Mount Whitney. At 14,496 feet it is the highest in the lower-forty eight states. Also, it would be the highest elevation that my body had ever ascended to. Dave Walker, who is a fellow graduate student in geography at UNR, suggested climbing the peak. Neither of us wanted to deal with the crowds or the quota system that is imposed upon hikers during the summer months so we opted to climb the peak in January, 2006. This also gave us the opportunity to do a little bit of telemark skiing on the descent from base camp.

We left Reno for Lone Pine, California and stayed the night in a BLM campground near the Whitney Portal road. That is Dave in the photo with the Whitney Portal road ascending the hill behind him. That night we were rocked by strong winds but awoke to improved conditions.

Our climb began a little before the trailhead since the road is closed in winter. That day we ascended to trail camp, at 12,039 feet and pitched our camp. At -10 F it felt just like an Alaskan climb. We pitched our tent in the lee of an outhouse for protection from the wind.

The following morning we awoke to conditions that couldn't be better and went for a summit attempt. The morning sun barely poked its head over the mountains to the southeast, but gave us a jolt of energy. We put our skis on and headed for the col where the summer hiking trail reaches trail crest at 13,777.
The ridgeline teated us to gorgeous views of the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park to the west and vast areas of wilderness. In January there were no other people around to disturb our solitude apart from the military fighter jets that buzzed overhead ever 5 to 10 minutes. I have to admit that low flying aircraft truly is one of the biggest impositions on one's wilderness experience. Nonetheless, there would be no wilderness experience in the summer due to the crowds, so I suppose that we were fortunate in that regard.

Trail ridge is where I began to feel the effects of altitude. My body had never been that high before and such a lengthy traverse at that altitude had me slowing to a crawl. We proceeded up the amount, albeit slowly. Not once did we have to don crampons, however I certainly was glad to have an ice ax in my hand. Although non-technical the route had several sections where a fall could have resulted in injury.

At the end of the day we reached the stone hut on the summit. We didn't have much time to linger, however, and quickly started on the descent. We hurried as quickly as we could at that altitude along the traverse but darkness caught us by the time we reached our skis and we were forced to ski down in the dark. I lost a skin on the descent, which I didn't discover until too late. We were tired and exhausted, but where was the tent? The tent and the outhouse were tucked away amongst the rocks and in the darkness everything looked alike. After over an hour of searching we found the tent and cooked ourselves dinner.

The next morning Dave and I set out looking for my lost ski skin, but to know avail. We shoved off from camp with loaded packs and skied down to the trailhead. The conditions above treeline were horrendous. Wind blown crust alternated with small pockets of powder. Once we dipped below treeline conditions improved and the skiing was remarkable. Finally, the trail narrowed into a thick forest canopy where the surface was littered with branches and needles. These conditions proved tricky. Around noon we returned to the car, took a look back at the peak, and counted ourselves lucky. What a great climb!

-Tom

Link to summitpost for route information: http://www.summitpost.org/route/156374/whitney-trail.html