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Monday morning was
departure day. We briefly debated going back to
Gaylor Peak. After all, it had a tailor-made
skintrack already punched in, with guaranteed good
snow, albeit somewhat tracked out. The previous
night we also thought about skiing out by way of the
chutes on the Dana Plateau, but worries about deep
snow and high winds across the plateau told us to save
it for the springtime. Fred suggested we do the
tour out over Tioga Peak and down to the highway via
the Warren Fork. I seconded the motion and soon
we had two groups -- one heading back for some Gaylor
lovin', and one headed out over Tioga Peak. We
didn't know what to expect on Tioga Peak, but agreed
that if it sucked it was all Fred's idea, and if it
was good then it was a group decision.
We broke trail in
deep snow through upper Lee Vining Creek, then angled
uphill to the ridge above Gardisky Lake.
Stopping for lunch on the ridge, it looked pretty
grim. There was windblown, exposed rock
everywhere, leaving just a finger of snow up towards
the summit. We couldn't tell if the snowfield
continued to the summit and whether or not it was
bulletproof windpack. We started to think that
maybe Gaylor Peak was the better call. Fred went
off and sat by himself for lunch :-)
But soon Matt the
madturtle began skinning like a madman up the
snowfield. We all followed and quickly blazed a
trail up to the summit. We poked around briefly
on the NE face for a descent option, but most of those
chutes had either slid in the recent storm or had some
combination of bad and/or unsafe snow. We
decided to retreat down our ascent route, the NW face.
The descent was unexpectedly fun. Five grim
turns of breakable crust led to 10 fun turns through
solid windbuff, which yielded to awesome powder turns
all the way down to Gardisky Lake. A bushwack to
the outlet, followed by some survival skiing through
the upper Warren Fork (including a sidestep up a steep
creek bank, and a *sketchy* creek crossing) and --
voilą -- we were back at the highway. We coasted
all the way back to our cars to finish off another
great day on a perfect trip.
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