Springtime Tallac

Paris had been telling me fables of an Alps-like summit along the west shore of Tahoe for a while… With spring conditions and still plenty of snow up high, we took advantage of the weather for an attempt at 9739 foot Mount Tallac today. It was an early start, Wild Man was the first one on the gondola to school at 7AM so I could make sure I was back in time to pick him up. Crazy to see how little snow was left at lake level as we headed south on Highway 89 along the lake’s shore. Such a weird snow year, feast or famine…

Our start at 6296 feet in the Spring Creek neighborhood was completely devoid of snow, so we hiked a half mile or so through the woods until we found a spot were we could don our skins. It was a pretty mellow climb along the low angle terrain at the base of Tallac, a mix of corn at ice from the melt the prior day.

The typical route to the summit – the ridge above and to the right of Paris in the last pic above – was completely bare, so we had to skin through one of the basins that still held snow below the peak. Tallac isn’t usually first choice for a day of touring powder after a storm – nearby Jakes and Rubicon are usually higher on the hit list – but it was still fun to get the low down on all the various descents from Paris as we climbed through the bowl. Some super burly routes – especially 55° Hanging Garden below the main bowl – that would be pretty fun to ski with fresh snow.

We had to crisscross a shaded section of the climb below the summit’s upper bowl, where the corn turned to ice and necessitated the ski crampons making their way out of our packs. I was thanking a higher power we had them, I don’t think the pitch would have been doable without them, it was one of those climbs that seemed to go on forever without any sight of the top. The main bowl below the summit was also pretty icy, mainly due to the wind ripping in from the east over the 9739 foot peak. We had to boot pack the last 20-or-so meters below the notch up to the summit, a pretty precarious maneuver to take our skis off on the ice with gusts that almost knocked me off my feet a few times (not like we would have slid to our deaths if we fell or anything like that, but it would have been a royal PITA to climb back up…).

We managed to find refuge on the west side of the summit out of the howling wind, the views into Desolation Wilderness were incredible from up there: blue skies that went on forever and a 270° panoramic of snowcapped peaks as far as the eye could see. Rock hopping around the back of the summit in ski boots in the howling gale was an interesting undertaking – especially with the skis on our backs acting like sails – but we made it to the top of Cross Couloir in one piece (just a mashed finger or two from the rocks for me…).

Cross Couloir was our intended route down, but as we were climbing earlier in the morning we saw an apron from a previous avalanche at the couloir’s base with a huge horizontal break right at the bottom of the chute. From a mile or two away during our climb we couldn’t tell if the break was one foot or 10 feet high, and we had no desire to launch ourselves off a 10 foot cornice onto ice at the base of Cross so opted for the mellow route down Tallac’s main bowl the way we’d come. The top was pretty icy and wind so intense that I had to lean into it and point my skis straight downhill to get anywhere, but we felt like we were on top of the world up there with Lake Tahoe thousands of feet below. The ice turned to fun spring corn as we got out of the wind-beaten bowl, good times chasing Paris through the trees and across a creek or two as we made it back to our shoes on the edge of the dirt in the neighborhood of Spring Creek.

3412 feet of ascent over 7.1 miles/11.3 kilometers and almost five-and-a-half hours later had us back at the car. Paris had the foresight to bring a couple of cold ones as well as a small bag of Tim Tams from his recent adventures in New Zealand. Chocolate cookies and beer never tasted so good…