Kidney Chute
I watched this video a while ago and I thought this line was one of the coolest in the Sierra. Did not meet expectations with the lower angle terrain and suboptimal ski conditions, but still great to check out the Dana Plateau regardless. Definitely need to come back to Tioga Pass a bit more next time.
Never gets old seeing the stars on a clear night
Sunrise on Tioga Road
This area has so many cool couloirs to check out.
It would be a great day just churning out these north facing lines.
Mount Dana from the long flat plateau.
Getting to Dana is actually a bit circuitous if you don’t feel inclined to boot up either the Solstice or its namesake couloir.
I suppose the left rim looks like it could go from the photos but hard to tell.
Mount Conness, one of my favorites in the Yosemite area
Mono Lake
And the ski line - a bit lower angle than what I was looking for in a spring line
The eastern slope of the Dana Plateau (depends where you consider the plateau I guess)
Notes
- This was probably ~8 miles and ~4900 feet of vertical gain in around 4 ½ hours.
- As noted earlier, so many cool couloirs to tackle here, as well as the entire eastern slope of the plateau.
- But it was laboring to contour north around the overbaked east slopes even after not quite waiting long enough for the SE Kidney Chute line to corn up.
- It seems like with the Eastern Sierra, you arrive a little earlier than we did to ski more snow down lower in some areas, or a little later for the access to improve like in the case of Tioga Pass. Not sure when they would open the road this year to the Saddlebag Lake area with the historic amount of snowfall, but starting from the power plant road wasn’t too bad.