April 20, 2008, Rubicon Peak Lake Tahoe

The wind came in hard on Saturday and it brought with it a dusting of snow overnight. I figured that the conditions were going to be bad, lots of dust on lots of crust, but I went for it anyway. I€™ve never hiked Rubicon peak before and I wanted to see the view more than anything else. The day turned out to be really nice with no wind and a cloudless sky. That seems to be a recurring event here in California. About an hour into the trip the slope started to get fairly steep with a bit of hard snow and after losing my ski twice, I decided to hike. Although I didn€™t have crampons, my trusty mega-rides got good purchase and I traversed the slope to a ridge I saw on the map and it was easy sailin€™ from there. The summit block is a class 2 exposed knife edge ridge and it was tricky climbing it in my ski boots. After enjoying the views for a bit, I cautiously started skiing down. The skiing was pretty bad, mostly hard pack with a bit of wind blown drifts, but it beats a day at work. This would be a really good mid winter trip with about 2 feet of fresh.