My wife Katie and I started the hike at the Mahogany Flat Campground after overnighting at Wildrose. From there, it’s 7 miles to the Telescope Peak summit via the normal trail. You don’t get a good view of Telescope until about 1.5 miles in, and I was having some knee pain starting out, so I left the skis and boots in the car.

When we rounded the corner with Telescope in the distance, the magnitude of the snow made me regret leaving the skis enough that I sent Katie on to Arcane Meadows to start lunch, and trail-ran back to the car to get the gear. Hiking up 2000 ft to meet her at Arcane Meadows (between Bennett and Rogers Peaks), we had lunch and started the long traverse to the base of Telescope.

After the 2 mile traverse when we started climbing again, she sent me off without her but kept up within a few hundred yards until the trail turned into a class 2 scramble. I continued up, alternating between the sunny side and snowy side, trying to find the trail where I could. What was left of the ridge cornice had turned into 1-2ft deep sun cups which made walking in them very difficult. A week of above-freezing temperatures softening the snow meant that even the bottom of the cups would give way another foot or so. I followed a kind Telemarker’s tracks straight up a snowfield to the top, kicking steps into the 45 degree grade and hoping I didn’t end up a yard sale before I even strapped on the skiis.

Once at the top, I waved hello to the Telescope summit a hundred yards to the south (but only about 10ft higher) and found the Tele’s tracks in the snow. The ride down was fun but difficult. The snow was nice spring corn at the top, but had a tendency to drop out in the shadows lower down. My legs were complete toast from the 10 miles I’d already hiked, so after the first few turns I could only do 1-2 at a time. I also was determined to not ski below the ridge; by this point I was done with up-hiking, so I ended up traversing more than I had to being extra-careful.

The video breaks where I ran the snow out. I could have skiied another 1,000 ft down at this point, but it would have meant hiking back up to the ridge before continuing on the 6 miles back to the car. I opted instead to ski what was left of the cornice. In my hiking (in my alpine downhill boots) and skiing and hiking to deal with the cornice (and the lack of it in some places), I forgot to turn the camera back on. Basically the best skiing was on the 60 degree steep, 10-20 ft tall east face of the cornice; I was thankful that my edges were sharp.

By the time I checked the camera, I was cruising down the easy part, and passed Katie as she snapped a few photos. I asked my legs to put in a good speed check for a better photo op, but they kindly refused. Had I been on A/T skis I could have skated up a little way and then skiied down another half-mile along the ridge, but at this point I was just too tired. I collapsed and waited for Katie to catch up.

It’s been a dream of mine to ski this since the first time I was on Telescope in May 2006, and now it’s finally done. I’m glad I did it, but I probably won’t do it again unless I’m in much better shape. Skiing Rogers peak (10,000ft) from either the Charcoal Kilns or Thorndike Campground would be great fun with the proper A/T gear in the dead of winter when there is good snow coverage.

Thanks to Blake Poe and others that have gone before proving this isn’t the craziest thing in the world to do. Thanks to Katie for being a trooper and carrying my food and extra water, and for the awesome dinner back at Mahogany. And finally, thanks to the 50ish telemarker that kicked my ass up and down Telescope, in Tele boots all the way. I hope I’m in half as good shape as you when I’m your age.

I headed up to Mt. Waterman, my favorite local SoCal mountain, alone early on Sunday morning. To my amazement, the road up the mountain was icy down low, snow packed up high, but open all the way. The plow drivers waved as I drove on through almost alone on the road. When I arrived at 8:45, the parking lot was almost empty but the lifts were already running.

Being the first open day of the season for Mt. Waterman (snow from Heaven, not from Hoses), it was a bit low tide out on the mountain. Waterman has some incredible terrain features (read big rocks to huck), but on this day they were a bit exposed. However, I quickly found that the coverage was more than adequate due to a good foot of solid wet base snow that was subsequently covered by a foot plus of light, fluffy, Colorado Champange. This was SoCal skiing at it’s absolute best.

This was only my second time at Mt. Waterman, so I didn’t know the mountain too well and stayed mostly on-piste. I ran laps down to empty lift lines and only found out later that the road was supposed to be closed but the county had forgotten to send CHP early to block the road. This resulted in less than 200 of us having the powder day of the decade while the rest of SoCal sat in lines on icy and snowpacked roads hoping they had woken up just a few minutes earlier.

Blake, Andy, and I headed up to Mt. Baldy after a week’s worth of storms dropped 5-7ft on the local Southern California ski area. Roads were restricted, lines were long, but we made the best of the day and got in some stellar runs, including skiing the east face of Mt. Harwood after hiking 500ft up from the top of chair 4.

Don’t miss the 4-day old baby elephant! In my wife’s words, “So little and cute.” It’s all relative I guess.

It was a busy spring, and it’s been just as busy a summer. I’ve finally posted some of the promised pictures. I’ve still got about 1300 pictures from France and Germany to go through, I’ll get those up asap. Enjoy.

There are about 3GB worth of photos I need to go through. Photos from places like Panorama Point in the Sierra Navada, Death Valley, the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, Mad King Ludwig’s castle Neuschwanstein, the Black Forest, Dachau Concentration Camp, and München biergärtens. We’ve had a pretty busy few months. On top of all of that, my lovely wife walked across the stage with her Master’s of Divinity, we’ve move into a new place, and planted a balcony vegetable garden. Many pictures and maybe a few stories are forthcoming in the days and weeks ahead.

We made it back to California yesterday after fighting with some sickness on the road and L.A. traffic. We had a lot of fun while we were there – thanks to everyone who hosted us. If we missed you this trip, there’s always next year. Pictures and such coming as soon as I’m really awake. Read: sometime later this week.