Price Ridge Powder

Yesterday I planned to ski w/Joe and Steve, but when I got to the meeting place, Dick, Mary and Hans were there too - so we discussed plans for a big tour. We decided to check out the possibility of skiing down to Davis Cr Park. When we got there we were worried about the (lack of) snow, but decided to drop two vehicles there and then drove up to Tahoe Meadows for a ski out Price Ridge.

Here's a view of Slide Mountain and the Ophir Cr drainage. Our planned decent would be on the looker's left of Ophir Cr.
Getting started:


There was a pretty nasty wind up there, but luckily it was behind us (coming from the north). After heading down the meadow a ways, we stopped in the trees to regroup.

We took a pretty direct line up to the high point of Chickadee Ridge and then up to the top of Price Peak. I stopped on the open slope up to Price Peak to dig a quick "mini-pit" which showed pretty good stability (compression test didn't fail at all). Up top we were in pretty dense clouds/fog and I got a bit disoriented so we ended up skiing our first run down the bowl to the south of the ridge, rather than down the steeper north slopes. Probably not a bad call for the first run though.

Here's my first try using my new helmet cam while skiing. It really doesn't capture the pitch of the slope, but hopefully it captures the fun!


From here we went back up to the ridge, got our bearings and skied a couple runs down the nicely gladed and steeper north pitches.
Hiking up:

Mary had some skin problems (ski skins) so we met up at the bottom of the steep "mini-bowl) at the edge of the ridge, just above Upper Ophir Cr.



We then traversed south to begin our tour down to Davis Cr, but after re-analyzing the snowpack the group reluctantly decided we didn't have enough snow to make the trip worthwhile. Unfortunately Hans had to get back early for a dinner party (or "hot date", we couldn't get out of him), so he, Mary and Dick headed back to the cars at the Meadows, while Joe, Steve and I went up for more skiing.

After reaching the ridge, Steve decided to dig a pit while Joe and I took another run. When we got back to him, I was impressed by the pit he dug.
Here's Steve skiing a nice little pitch.

The snowpack was about 1 1/2 meters deep and pretty solid until the very bottom. The first ~4 inches is terrible TG "sugar snow". Fortunately no matter how hard I jumped I could not make that layer release (modified Rutschblock). I would still recommend caution on steeper slopes though. We took one more run and then contoured north back to the car just as it was getting dark.



Steve had a bottle of "fortified" soy eggnog waiting for us. As Joe said, it was like "a blanket in a bottle".

It turns out we skied and climbed just over 5,000 feet and a bit under 7 1/2 miles.