Lassen Peak SE face
Lassen SE was a very good skiing on corn snow, but maybe one of the last chance for this year. With my buddy Richard we started from the parking lot above Lake Helen at 6am, skinning up with ski crampon on. Perfect weather with blue sky and pleasant temperature. We skinned up on the shorter slope SE (the more left of the two) to gain the usual summer trail, following it for 15 min to the lower summit of Lassen. Great views all around with a wonderful Mt. Shasta. Other guys told us that the North East route wasn't in good shape and of course with a lot of walking. Then we skied down on SE face on nice compact snow with a final exit on dirty snow paying attention to save the skis on some rocky corridors. The snow was still firming and not mushy, so we decided to boot up for a 2nd lap on the left slope. Again a perfect corn down until to the road. Very happy for this Lassen Peak route after the NE of 3 years ago.
The SE face of Lassen Peak from the way back
The survived south slope , we traversed to east
Heading up on the shorter left slope toward ridge
From here on the summer trail
Mount Shasta
Richard skiing down from Lassen Peak
Down on the left slope for a 2nd run
Easy turns
Towards the road
Corn! So jealous.
My one time on Lassen we had similar snowpack on the S. We took Amar's suggestion and skied the West face, which had more continuous snow than the S. The tortoiseshell butterfly swarms on the summit were memorable.
Thanks for the TR
In about 1978 or so I hiked the summer trail with Jeff Coburn and Rusty Dupree in July or August and skied that same lovely slope. It was the first time I ever did this sort of thing. The hikers were beyond Incredulous, as there was truly no snow in sight until right there. I submitted a photo to the Sacramento Bee and they wrote a story about it…The only one who didn’t like it was some new Ranger who thought we were going to die on a 35 degree snowfield….Good job getting the timing right - bad year for the Sierra.
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