Islip From Crystal Lake
I assume you don’t need me to tell you, but there is a lot of snow out there right now. Yesterday Dave Braun and I drove up to Crystal Lake for a low-expectations scouting run. We were delighted to...
View ArticleHighway 2 Update
Not Fast is my guess as to when the 2 will open. Here’s a look at the Angeles Crest Highway about a mile and a half east of Islip Saddle, just absolutely buried in snow. Dave Braun and I dropped down...
View ArticleIslip’s South Face
In the aftermath of the giant February 2023 storm, which put snow at unusually low elevations throughout the San Gabriels, I urgently wanted to ski Islip’s south face before it melted out, but Highway...
View ArticleThe Other Williamson
SoCal mountain road access continues to evolve in an ever-more discouraging direction, so I’ve been scanning my Harrison maps to look for alternate access points. That led me to discover there is (or...
View ArticleWaterman Update
As far as I can tell this past storm put rain on the Waterman Crest and not much else, but there is still a great deal of snow up there from the big February storm. Maybe an inch fell at the top of the...
View ArticleWright Mountain via Heath Canyon
Here’s Matt D earning his handle in Wright Mountain’s Heath Canyon. 8505′ Wright Mountain is the highest point along Blue Ridge, which we traversed yesterday from Mountain High East. The Blue Ridge...
View ArticleSkiing Kratka Ridge
Yesterday I took my daughter to ski Kratka Ridge, one of Southern California’s “lost” ski areas. It was her first official day backcountry skiing in Southern California. I do think Kratka (a.k.a....
View ArticleAllison Clay
Dave Braun and I took a spring break trip to Flagstaff, Arizona this past week to ski some of the big lines on my hometown mountain, the San Francisco Peaks. Initially I was concerned there wouldn’t be...
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Humphreys Cirque
While the west side of the San Francisco Peaks is inarguably beautiful, I tend to think of it as the boring part of the mountain. The west side includes the Arizona Snowbowl, and as you’d expect on a...
View ArticleA Very Wet Waterman
With weekend snow levels forecast to dip as low as 4000′, it was possible to believe there’d be cold April powder turns in the mountains this weekend. The reality was quite a bit wetter. Temps at the...
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