Great Way to Celebrate Dina's Birthday!

Dina's Birthday was yesterday (5/22) and I had the day off. She was kind enough to let me "go play" for the day. And play I did!

I started out the day by meeting Steve up at Alpine Meadows at 7:30, which closed weeks ago, and we skinned up to the top of Ward Peak and then dropped over the back side towards the the Sherwood Bowl chair for two nice, steep corn runs. Then we climbed back up to the top of the peak and skied down to the cars.

Here's Steve heading up:


Here I am up on top of the ridge:


Here's a short run:


After skiing, I drove up over Donner Summit and met Chad, his friend Mike and another kayaker they bumped in to, Buddy, for kayaking the "Summit Run" of the upper South Yuba River (aka Rainbow Lodge run). It's one of my favorite runs, but since I haven't been kayaking much in years, I was a bit nervous. I remember the run pretty well and Buddy knew it cold. It was at a perfect level (bout 650cfs) and dropping in that first rapid from "Hansel and Gretel" bridge was a blast!
Here's a picture of the first rapid from above:



I was concerned about the second big rapid b/c I've seen people get worked in the hole at the bottom, but it went fine. We enjoyed working our way down thsi wonderful "pool and drop" river and I really enjoyed the new line on the big ledge drop that Buddy showed me. Here's the approach and drop:

Chad and I hiked the cascaded above Rainbow Lodge, but Buddy and Mike ran part of it. Impressive! Below Rainbow Lodge, "Double Drop" or "Z Drop" was next. Chad and I had really clean lines on it, and everyone did fine. The whole time I've got the final big drop, "Tombstone", in my mind. Will I run it or not? I've run it every other time I did the river, but... Well, we got down there, I looked at it and I knew my line. What a rush and what a fun rapid!

Here's the drop from below after I ran it:


Here's my run. Unfortunately a big drop of water got on the lens after the first drop.


Now we just had a few little rapids to bop down to the take-out. But lo and behold, Chad and I decide to run a narrow entrance together and we knock each other over. After getting banged up a bit and missing a role I pull the sprayskirt and bail! Oh, the shame of it all. Oh well. Maybe it's just rationalization, but it felt good to "swim" and realize that it's not so bad.

We were famished by the end of the run and enjoyed a beer and sandwhiches. I got home with just enough time to shower, change and go out to a lovely dinner at Lexie's overlooking the Truckee River in downtown Reno with my lovely Birthday Girl.

Getting Warm - harvesting corn before it's too late!

The temps were predicted to hit the nineties here in Reno today and tomorrow (I don't think it quite made it today), but I was determined to get some corn harvesting in. Jon Tay was game as well, so we headed up to the Rose BC with Yuki. We skinned up to the ridge between Incline Lake Peak and Rose Knob Peak and had a great run down towards Third Cr and Tahoe. Then we climbed up to Rose Knob Peak and took a short run down, one more run like the first and then down the other side back to the car. The only time we hit "mank" was getting to the car.

From David's Skiing, Kayaking, Mtn Biking and All Round "Fun Hog" Report

From David's Skiing, Kayaking, Mtn Biking and All Round "Fun Hog" Report

From David's Skiing, Kayaking, Mtn Biking and All Round "Fun Hog" Report

I got home around noon and Dina took off for a "girls weekend" at Northstar. After some yard work, the boys (and Treyson's friend Jayden) had a blast playing in the sprinklers.

Squaw Valley 5-7-09

We finally got some nice weather and I was itching to ski. I had hoped on doing a big back-country day, but it just didn't fall in to place. Luckily I was able to hook up with Justin and comp a ticket for Squaw Valley. We got a bit of a late start but I figured the elevation we gained from the cable car made up for it. After one run down from the lift, we put the skins on and headed up to the summit of Granite Chief.

From May09

We then continued out and down the ridge to the next peak over. There was in incredible cornice and huge slide below it. Just so impressive to look at.

From May09

From May09

The snow was getting very soft, so we skied down the ridge and then carefully dropped down and skied to the bottom of an incredible bowl. An hour climb and were were ready to drop back down to the Shirley Lake lift and ski out.

We finished the afternoon off with a fun little mountain bike ride on Loyd's Loop.

Floriston to Verdi - 5-6-09

The weather is improving, but it's still very windy, so it seemed like kayaking would be a better option than skiing. Luckily Chad and Craig were already planning on boating the Truckee, so I hooked up with them for the run from the top of Floriston to Crystal Peak park. The flows have come down a bit and it was running about 1400cfs at Farad. I took my bigger boat, the Kix, partly b/c I wanted to try it out and partly b/c I wanted to be more stable for "Deadmans" and if we ran "Stateline Dam". The only problem is that a the darn boat leaks, I don't know if it's from the sprayskirt, which fits loosely, or somewhere else, but I had to keep emptying it. Anway, we had a fun run: Floriston was fine, even if I did get turned around in the eddy at the top of Jaws; Deadmans was an easy line, and we walked Stateline. The howling wind and whitecaps just made it more interesting.

May Backcountry with Treyson

I bought Treyson a pair of Alpine Trekkers for his Birthday and we got to try them out today. Unfortunately the weather is rather inclement; we’re having a series of storms come in with pretty high snow levels (~8,000’). It was a mixture of rain, sleet and snow at the parking lot, but we gave it a go anyway. Once we got moving it wasn’t bad. Treyson did well on the climb.

From May09

From May09

It didn't hurt to have Yuki pulling on some of the climbs. We made it about 1,000 feet up and then he was done. The ski down was okay – about 3 – 4 inches of wet snow on a firm base. the views of the valley were interesting, with the clouds and all.

From May09

Trey really started getting the hang of it near the bottom, but then took a nasty fall that hurt his knees. I was worried he blew an ACL, but he’s running around now.

Running Floriston Rapid May 2nd 2009

Last night Dina threw me a surprise birthday party at Silver Peak (I was very surprised) and I got talking to Eric Frudden, Charles and Eric Lovejoy about boating – how I really stopped kayaking. Well, today I noticed the river was brown and fast and when I checked the flow it was 1900 at Farad. So I called Frudden and we drove up there to run it. We were both a tad tense about running it at the higher flow, given neither of us has boated much in the past few years (although Eric did do the Grand last summer!). In any case, we pretty much just ran it without much playing. It took all of ~30 mins! Jaws had a big line down the right and I pretty much nailed it (always anticlimactic when you hit the line). Eric went too far left and had an exciting run, hitting the bottom hole. After Jaws I felt much looser and had more fun. I did drop in to one hole unintentionally, but stayed cool and enjoyed pulling to get out. We were both so glad we did the run. For me at least, it made me feel like I can still kayak!

Here's what the run looked like from the bridge as we drove up:

From Drop Box