Mount Elwell Ski Tour
3/17/19
After a surprisingly smooth summit of Ellis Peak the day before, I was excited to try my luck at Mount Elwell. As we drove north from Tahoe and into lower elevations, I began to worry that there might not be snow at the trailhead (given that it’s only at 5200’). We made a stop at the Sierraville hot springs, which are at about 5000’, and there was no snow to be found there. While Leo and I were enjoying the hot springs, our friend Sadie drove out to the trailhead and reported back that there was plenty of snow (Thank you Sadie! I had been considering just bailing entirely).
Sadly the next morning, Sadie wasn’t feeling great so she opted to head home. Leo and I left the trailhead from Johnsville, CA at 7:25am — a bit of a later start than I was hoping for. In researching the peak, I had stumbled upon the Plumas Ski Club, who were holding one of their three-times-a-year International Longboard Championships! I was dying to check out the festivities, so I wanted to bag the peak quickly and be back at the car in time for the races. (Seriously, you should click those links and read about this).
We followed Bob Burd’s track up to the ridge that is near the trailhead, which parallels some cross country ski trails. Given how warm it had been in recent days, the snow had a decent freeze on it. Since getting up the ridge was a bit steep, our skins weren’t holding on the icy snow. We ended up bootpacking the last few hundred feet up the ridge pretty easily, with no traction devices. Once on the ridge, we put our skis back on and continued skinning. Soon enough we were at the edge of the ridge and had to descend a bit to the saddle leading up to the next ridge. We chose to stay in walk/skin mode and were able to make it down before continuing back up. Leo and I were both feeling a bit nervous that this was going to be a long slog that wasn’t going to be fun (and would take much longer than expected, causing us to miss the Longboard races entirely). We decided if we wanted to make it to the races, our turnaround time should be 10:30am, so we might as well continue till then and see how it goes.
As we reached the saddle, the terrain looked quite steep and the trees looked pretty tight. We stayed left a bit, trying to avoid the steepest parts, but still found ourselves in very dense trees. I was ready to bail, but we hadn’t reached our decision time yet, so we continued a bit further. We switched to bootpacking again, and I feared it would be slow going for ages, but we only needed to bootpack for maybe 100 feet before it opened up again. The terrain became very reasonable, and we decided we’d go all the way to the summit.
From there, it was pretty straightforward with one more hump before the summit. Most of the way we followed another skin track (which we were surprised to see), among many snowmobile tracks. Despite all the tracks, we didn’t see any other people out the whole day. We made it the summit at 11am, and it was definitely a sight. Getting out there to the more obscure Tahoe peaks that don’t have the hordes that the classic Tahoe spots have is really special. On such a clear day, it was beautiful. Sierra Buttes looking incredibly rugged to the south, Lassen to the north.
We took 20-30 minutes to snack and transition before heading back out. Eastern facing aspects were quite mushy already, with all the warm sunshine on those slopes. We chose to ski back down the ridge the way we came, to make sure we’d make good distance back towards the trailhead. In some spots the snow was pretty good, but it was variable the whole way: from hard crust to slushy to even some small stashes of a thing layer of powder. We continued down the ridge without to many issues. It got dense here and there, but nothing some side-slipping couldn’t handle. As we neared the saddle we had to be sure to avoid some very steep terrain to the west.
Back at the saddle, instead of ascending back up the first ridge, we contoured it to the west, dropping down into the adjacent valley that holds the cross country ski trails. We contoured for as long as we could, so that we’d have to walk as little as possible. Once we were on the valley floor, we follow the flat-ish trails for about 3/4 of a mi until we found ourselves back at the trailhead. Car to car took about 6 hours and 10 minutes: definitely longer than I was expecting, but not a long outing. I was incredibly happy that turns out the races go into the afternoon, so we were still able to see em (and they are well worth seeing! A good family spot). A pretty excellent day of activity before the drive back home.