Clamoring for a New Couloir – Sonora Pass, CA

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For the duration of the month of May, a continuation of high altitude storms thankfully added to the historically shallow Sierra snowpack. With these storms dropping a foot here, a few inches there, another foot there, I realized the window of opportunity could possibly exist for a certain zone of chutes that I have been eyeing for many years. It’s in an area on Sonora Pass that few frequent as you have to boot directly up a choice of two couloirs, of which, cannot be accessed from above.

After a week and a half of road closures among a constant study of the weather, it looked like our chance to head up Sonora Pass (highway 108) would be in the early hours of May 24th, 2015. Naturally, I rallied up the troops…or maybe just the few that don’t mind late season uphill exhaustion.

A 3:40am wake-up call is actually not that bad when skiing is involved, that’s just the nature of the late-season game.vAfter grabbing Dave in Alamo Square, followed by a meeting with Aaron in the town of Sonora, we surprisingly kept to the strict schedule of a 7:30am arrival to the Pass. To make us feel special or maybe wasting our time, we failed to see any other snow soldiers with the same plan.

Due to the low snow year and being so late in the season, the first 500 feet of uphill vertical involved river crossings and cree ascents combined with some rather warm morning temps. However, once we hit the high alpine, we were greeted by a fresh layer of snow ideal for skinning right to the base of the couloir. In the distance and on point with the forecast, we could see some thunderstorm clouds building. It was at this point in time that we knew we would get only one opportunity to ski a line…so we needed to make it a good one.

As we neared the mountain face just above Blue Canyon Lake, we had the option of a couloir to the right and left. The couloir to the right looked longer and more aesthetic so we unanimously chose that one. While bootpacking up the couloir, the snow quality was wintery with a hint of Sierra cement, but with the high angle of the sun, the snow was changing quickly. As we reached the summit, the clouds engulfed the sun and moisture began to fall…we had to get down this thing fast! As rain fell, one by one, we made our descent. Even with the snow being a bit on the sticky side for our descent, we were stoked, albeit totally soaked, to bang out a new line on the Pass.

Unfortunately, after a few high fives on the apron below the chute, we realized the rain turned the snow into the manliest of mank and realized the exit to the car was going to be a slogfest. Would it have been tremendously better if we made our descent a half hour earlier? Probably, but let’s not harp on that at the moment…its a mega drought year after all, and we’re still chuting it up!

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Thank heaven for this fine establishment on ski touring days…

Because our destination is actually on a mountain just to the North of Leavitt Peak, we started our ascent on the lower end of the pass…

Dave successfully crossed the Mississippi…

After a scramble up some lower elevation scree, we quickly transitioned onto our skis and eventually found ourselves with a glorious view of Leavitt Peak…

Birds were chirping and the sky was blue…for the time being that is…

Touring around Sonora Pass presents us, as humans, with some serious terrain…

After a few hours, our line came into view…

”So where did we park the car?…

It was time to shed some layers and head straight up the Mystery Couloir…

More clouds moved in from above on each step…

Aaron Miller decides to drop in first…

From what I could tell, he was enjoying his late May, steep, semi-pow, aesthetic line…

After a few ‘yeahs’ from Aaron, I decided to drop in…

Dave followed suit and skied the line in a impressively proficient manner…

And to think we left San Francisco at 4am and ended up skiing this a few hours later…

At this point, the rain was falling and I was not really skiing blower pow pow…

Woot woot! Success! Our line is the one on the right…

Now in pouring rain…it was a long slow push ‘in the direction’ of the car.

Of course, the snow thinned as we dropped in elevation, thus making creek management in play…

Oh the joys of drought skiing in extremely late May…