Lake Alpine Sno Park

When: 2017-04-15 to 2017-04-15

Leaving the Bay Area a bit before 5 A.M., we headed up to Lake Alpine. I had my first ski lesson a week before this trip and picked up a rental pair of AT skis with skins, the day before. Because we intended to practice some snow skills, I thought this would be a low risk environment to also compare skinning with AT skis with my previous snowshoe experience. Other skills include self-arrest from various starting positions and setting up crevasse rescues.

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Skills Test

Francisco looking back, as he approaches the first moderate hill of the route.

Francisco as he approaches the last climb of the approach.

Wind meet snow.

Francisco in a self-arrest.

Myself, in a self-arrest.

Overall a good, and unexpectedly tiring, trip. A few lessons that I learned include: (1) YouTube is not the best ski instructor, (2) turns with skins on are significantly more difficult than with skins off, (3) snowshoes deserve to be called slowshoes. On a more serious note, the self-arrest practice only reinforced that more practice is necessary to make it second nature. Also, setting up a pulley system alone will be time consuming.