THERE WAS A TIME, many years ago, when I had this problem. Yes, I’ll admit it. I was a ski-a-holic. I couldn’t get enough: from the first snow flurries around the Christmas holidays, to the sunny spring days, where carving turns on pristine Sierra corn was simply Nirvana. And while downhilling at the resorts was all good fun and great practice, it was in the backcountry where I found total harmony. Here, you had to earn your turns.
This is the first of four installments of some of my backcountry exploits in the local mountains and High Sierra. I lugged around a 35mm Pentax SLR in those early days—no fancy mini-cameras back then—so it was difficult to impossible to snap any action shots, or be overtly spontaneous. But I got by. So pop into your bindings and enjoy the pics…
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San Jacinto Mountains, 1978: Riverside Mountain Rescue Unit teammates, Ed Hill and Steve Jensen, survey the fresh powder in Tahquitz Meadow during a training weekend. Due to the heavy, external-frame packs we had to carry, snowshoes were our usual mode of travel in the winter. But on this trip, Ed brought along his Nordic skis to tool around after we dropped our packs and made camp. I had never skied before, and watching him glide across the meadow and through the woods struck a chord—and he made it look so easy.
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San Jacinto Mountains, 1978: This is our camp from the same RMRU training weekend as the prior photo. A storm had rolled in; snowed all night long. During the course of the evening, my tent mate and mentor, Bernard McIlvoy, the Chasm Meister himself, affirmed that he was amped to purchase cross-country skis. He and another teammate (Tom Aldridge?) had recently rented gear in Mammoth and skied out to the Hot Creek Hot Springs. That trip pretty much sealed the deal. We were going to take up skiing.
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San Gorgonio Wilderness, 1979: Skating across Dry Lake on my new Trak Mountain skis. These skis were a little wider than the standard Nordic planks, sporting metal edges and a waxless base. Before buying, I had frequently rented the traditional cross-country skis which required kicker waxes. But having to constantly apply and remove those waxes—especially the messy red Klister—unanimously settled it for me: I was going with the new, waxless Traks. A Nordic purist, I was not.
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San Jacinto Mountains, 1979: Bernie McIlvoy streaks through the forest near Tamarack Valley. When it came time to buy ski gear, he went with fat, metal-edged Trucker alpine skis with Ramer bindings. The bindings, which Paul Ramer introduced in the late ‘70s, revolutionized alpine ski touring. The heel piece was free in the ascent mode, and with climbing skins, you were capable of attacking surprisingly steep slopes. For the decent, you removed the skins; locked down the heel piece; and presto, you were downhill skiing.
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San Jacinto Mountains, 1979: J.R. Muratet and Bernie pause for a break on Black Mountian Road. An Arctic storm had trundled through SoCal the night before, and in its wake, J.R., Bernie, Pete Carlson and I skied the eight miles up to the summit of Black Mountian.
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Pear Lake Ranger Station, Sierra Nevada, 1979: Bernie (hanging from the roof) and I skinned six miles into this backcountry ranger station in Sequoia National Park for some springtime skiing. I think we paid $7 per person per night ($38 now). Accommodations included bunk beds; a full galley with white gas stoves; a dozen old National Geographics; a Playboy magazine; a half-full (but soon empty) bottle of Jack Daniels; and a potbelly stove with a chord of wood to keep the place cozy. It was a super deal, and we had the whole place to ourselves.
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Tablelands, Sierra Nevada, 1979: This 11,000-foot plateau overlooking the Great Western Divide is readily accessible from Pear Lake Ranger Station. The Tablelands is also part of the spectacular Sierra High Route, a 50-mile ski tour that begins in Independence on the east side of the range, and ends in Sequoia National Park on the west side. The first traverse of the entire route was done in the mid ‘70s by backcountry ski virtuoso Dave Beck (whom I would run into on the High Route many years later). It is still the most coveted trans-Sierra passage in the range.
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Tablelands, Sierra Nevada, 1979: Bernie mounts up for another exhilarating run down to Pear Lake Ranger Station. His alpine touring gear had the advantage on the steeps, while my lighter Nordic setup excelled on the flatter terrain. Everything is a trade-off.
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Sunrise at Anvil Camp, Sierra Nevada, 1980: At an elevation of 10,500 feet, this is the traditional first-night camp of the Sierra High Route. We got this far before increasingly foul weather beat us back.
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San Jacinto Mountains, 1981: RMRU teammate, Tony Loro, scans the terrain as we are airlifted into the high country after a winter storm. When three backcountry skiers failed to return home Sunday night, their wives called the Sherriff and we were called in.
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San Jacinto Mountains, 1981: Don Landells hovers near the summit of Jean Peak, assessing a location to drop off a search team. Without a doubt, Don was one of the best chopper pilots in the business, constantly amazing us on the improbable locations where he could light. It was Don who airlifted most of the men and material up into Chino Canyon for the construction of the Palm Springs Tramway (though the magnitude of this aerial feat is lost unless you’ve taken the Tram, and seen firsthand the precipitous locations of the tower landing pads). Tragically, he was killed in 1986 when his helicopter crashed during a bighorn sheep tagging assignment for the Department of Fish & Game.
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San Jacinto Mountains, 1981: New deployment tactics took shape as more team members took up backcountry skiing. With a helicopter, we could drop off two-man teams on peaks and high ridges, where they could ski down through a search zone faster than a team on snowshoes. Soon after my teammate, Jim Garvey, snapped this photo of me, we came upon the snowshoe tracks of some lost (and clueless) backpackers, and then followed them down to their bivouac at Willow Creek Crossing. This was also the winter where I made the switch from Nordic to alpine touring gear.
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Mammoth-Yosemite Trans-Sierra Route, 1982: J.R. Muratet skins up a slope on Day 1 of our trip. We gave ourselves six days to cover the 60-mile passage from Mammoth Lakes to Yosemite Valley.
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Mammoth-Yosemite Trans-Sierra Route, 1982: J.R. packs up for another day on the trail. The first day of the trip had started out bright and sunny, though clouds rolled in as the day progressed. We woke up to snow flurries on the second day, and it continued to dump, night and day, for the remainder of the trip. This slowed our progress significantly—and with all that fresh powder stacking up on the slopes, the avalanche potential became more than we bargained for. We turned around and headed back to Mammoth on the morning of Day 4, rather than continue over Donohue Pass and down the avalanche-prone Lyell Canyon to Tuolumne Meadows.
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Mammoth-Yosemite Trans-Sierra Route, 1982: We had blizzard conditions for most of the 3-day retreat back to Mammoth. While skiing along the Middle Fork of the San Joaquin River, it ceased snowing long enough to snap this photo. Upon reaching Mammoth, bone tired and nearly depleted of food and fuel, we discovered that the gigantic storm system that had pounded us for days had been one for the record books. (This same storm dumped 15 feet of snow at Donner Summit.)
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San Jacinto Peak, 1983: Bernie basks in winter sunshine at the summit hut. We would ski the peak from the Palm Springs Tram mountain station several times each year, snow conditions permitting. As for Bernie, the consummate renegade, nobody at the time was ticking off as many ski descents as he was. On one search mission around 1983-84, Don Landells dropped him off right on the summit at sundown. Then, after checking the hut and immediate area for signs of the missing party, he skied back down to Long Valley Ranger Station under a full moon, on a foot of fresh powder. Who could ask for more?
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To be continued...
