Donner to Donner March 6th 2009

I hooked up with Dave Sartoni, Kiwi Lynn ad four of Dave’s friends for the Donner to Donner (summit to lake) ski. Dave never skied with two of the guys and at the trailhead we found out they didn’t have beacons, which caused us some consternation. But we decided to go on anyway and to put them in the middle of us. The wind was pretty hard out of the west and at the top of Judah we discussed routes, eventually deciding that Eric and Paul would ski the mellower line below us and the rest of us headed out the ridge past the big bowl and cornices. The line I thought I saw down a “rib” didn’t look as safe as I had thought so after more discussion we eventually picked a line off the rib in to the next bowl. We hit some mild crust but it was a decent run (the snow was better were Eric and Paul skied). While we were skiing we heard and then saw a bit of the cornice ahead of us break off but it only triggered a little sluff.

From there we went back up and skied down along Eric and Paul’s first run and then cut over to the ridge to drop down to Donner Lake. There was a well worn track over there with plenty of skiers and boarders cutting over from the top of the Judah lift. We had a pleasant run down to the tracks, followed them to the right/east to the next tunnel and then decided to climb up to the ridge for one more short run. It was the best snow of the day, so I suggested that one group run the car shuttle while another (Me, Lynn and Scotty) do another lap. We skied further to the east, coming out on the east end of the tunnel before joining most of the other tracks. We only waited about 15 min’s to be picked up by Dave.

On the way home we had an interesting discussion about the decisions we made (not knowing ahead of time that Eric and Paul didn’t have beacons, continuing anyway, splitting up, the line we chose off Judah, splitting up skiing down Donner and climbing back up, then three of us squeezing in a last lap).

Some pictures courtesy of Davide.

Hiking along Mt Judah's Summit Ridge:

Looking at the cornice and an older fracture line (scary!):

Josh getting turns:
Back up at the summit



Eric checks out the snow:
A map of our route:


Helmet cam: