Sunday, March 20, 2005

With my friends Sabine and Stefan from San Francisco, I went back to Tioga Pass Resort March 6-9, during Penn's spring break. The highlight of the trip was a ski ascent and descent of Mount Dana (13,057 ft), which sits on the border between the Ansel Adams Wilderness and Yosemite National Park on the Eastern Sierra, Southwest of Mono Lake. The day was warm, sunny, calm. We started the ascent at the gaging station just North of Tioga Lake by Tioga Pass Road close to the Eastern entrance of the park. We skinned South through conifer forest (thanks for the shade) to a series of steep climbs along the Northwest ridge of Dana. The snow on the ridge was wind scoured, icy in many places and deeply rutted in others. Ski crampons came in very handy. It got rather hot on the last 1,000 ft of climbing. After a lunch and photo break at the summit, we skied down the mostly well-covered Eastern face of the summit to Dana Couloir (diagonal snow strip at the lower left in the picture), which was filled with variable but very skiable wind-packed powder with a strip of soft avalanche debris from a skier-triggered slide (fortunately without victims) three weeks before. From the bottom of the 40 degree couloir, we followed Glacier Canyon back to our start point and finally to the lodge in good time for a much-needed, delicious dinner. More photos here. 6:37:29 PM