Road Trip. Utah - Washington!! Volcano Skiing........

Heading accross the desert out of Salt Lake City on a hot spring day, our first stop, of course, the great salt flats.  And they are just that, flat.  And beautiful. White salt almost as far as you can see.  The Salt Flats are shrinking though......because peolple like to eat salt.  They are also known for World Records in Land Speed.  Jamie always likes to take some jump shots! 

We make our way accross Nevada on what seems to me, the loneliest road in America, to Northern California and the begining of the Cascade Volcanic Arc.  Our plan is to ski some volcanoes on the way to Washington. We have two weeks.  It'll be a good time no matter what, but good weather always makes for better times!

The southernmost Volcano is Lassen Peak.

We found this great place to camp by a river.  Here is a picture of the rig.  Driving the RV with the truck in tow, full of everything we own.  Heavy.

And the Cats came along for the ride.

It rained for almost two days while we camped at this spot.  The forecast finally looked up and we woke to clear calm weather.  We headed up to climb Lassen Peak around 5am.  It was so cold in the morning.  It had snowed a few inches of graupel up high, then blew into piles. It rained on top of that and froze.  Lets just say it was a bit variable. Not epic skiing conditions.  We made it to about 300ft short of the summit and the slope got too steep to continue skinning.  We then realized we forgot our crampons, so we had to turn around. Sad, but safety first, right.  By the time we switched over to ski mode, the snow had softened a bit and was beautiful, corn conditions and super fun to ski. 

We skied down to the truck by 11am, broke down camp and headed for Mt. Shasta!

Mt. Shasta 14.179 ft.  Second highest in the Cascade Range.

Mt. Shasta is a two day climb.  11 miles and 7300 ft of elevation gain.  We drove the RV to Bunny Flat trailhead and spent the night there in the parking lot.  In the morning we woke up, not too early as we were'nt going straight for the summit.  Jamie and I donned full packs and started skinning to "Lake Helen" (10,440ft) to camp for the night.  We got a bit off the route somehow and found ourselves to high on the ridge.  We had to ski back down to the gully to get back on course.  It was about a 600 ft ski run, unexpected, but fun.  When we got to Lake Helen some people were leaving and we got their tent site.  It was nice not to have to dig in as much! 

click on the photos in the gallery to see full size image and read the captions.

We spent that night in the craziest wind I have ever "slept" in.  I read later it was blowing sustained 45mph. I woke up at 4am to look at the weather, looked outside to see a complete white-out.  Decided to try again in an hour.  And every hour until 10am.  By noon, I could sort of see blue in the clouds and although it was too late to leave for a summit atempt, it was nice to see the sun again.  It was still super windy and it actually knocked me to the ground once.  I knew the weather was supposed to be perfect Tuesday, the next day, so I decided to turn on my phone and see if I could get a forecast.  Amazingly, I had the internet at 10,440 on the side of Mt. Shasta.  The weather looked grim for that night.  Calling for gusts in the mid to upper 80's and snow.  We decided another night of even crazier wind wasn't worth it and headed down.  Not without some major reluctance.......another time.

Thumbs down for not making the summit, but always a smile to be able to play in the mountains!

A quick jump shot on the way out.

It always feels so good to get the boots off! In the parking lot at Bunny Flats.

Mt. Shasta and Shastina from the North.

Continuing North to Crater Lake, Oregon. 

Crater Lake is the result of the massive eruption of Mt. Mazama, an ancient volcano.  Mt. Mazama would have stood about 12,000 ft, puting it with the likes of  The Sisters, Jefferson and Hood.  Mazama collapsed into itself and lost almost a mile of height, creating the ninth deepest lake in the world over millions of years. I've always dreamed of skiing here.  The lines are perfect.  With the road still closed and tons of snow around, we spent the night in another parking lot.

We decided to follow the closed road north along the crater rim towards The Watchman and see what we could see.  The Watchman is a fire lookout on the lake ridge at 8018ft.  We started out skinning directly along the ridge and soon found out it would be easier to just follow the road. It is interesting skiing along the side of a paved road, can't say it's one of my favorite things.  I wish we would have thought about bringing bikes along.

Crater Lake is a magical place.  I love the energy here.  The water is among some of the purest in the world.

We went to about 7000ft on the Watchman when the clouds rolled in and it got super cold.  The ski lines didn't look super enticing on the mountain so we decided to get some ski shots and head back.  This one is fun!

We stayed one more night at Crater hoping to ski something else the next day, but woke up to bad weather and headed to the Three Sisters zone.  Stopped in Bend, resupplied and headed to ski the South Sister and Broken Top.  On our way down the Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway the road ended in a ten foot snow bank and forced us left into the parking lot of Mt. Bachelor.  Funny thing is, the next day was the last day of the season at Bachelor and was forecast to be bluebird.  We camped in the parking lot again, this time it was ten bucks.  It snowed nine inches and was an awesome blubird pow day at Bachelor.  We got to stand on top, look out over the Cascade Volcanoes and take some great ski shots!

Me with Broken Top right and South Sister left.

Jamie Jumpin

All good things must come to an end.......... I mean, break.   We had to get to Leavenworth to start work for the summer.  Then on to the next adventure. 

I want to give a massive shout out to Jamie Callister for taking such incredible photos and basically being my personal photographer!