Round Top Peak

My first chance to hang with the Sierra Club Peak Climbing Section came this past weekend, it was long anticipated! The planned excursion was to day climb Round Top Peak near South Lake Tahoe. Since we were to drive all the way up to Tahoe, it made sense to spend the entire weekend there. I joined Arun, the leader of the group climb up Round Top Peak on Sunday, we also skied at Kirkwood on Saturday. Since Arun is a season pass holder at Kirkwood, he was able to get us special offer tickets for $39 for the day, hot deal! This is half the price of a regular ticket, it is all about the people you know.

Unfortunately I forgot my camera in the car for the day, but the slope conditions were storybook. There was not a cloud in the sky all day, the sun baked the snow into corn and baked me thoroughly too! Despite applying sun protection, it is easy to underestimate the CA sun, it is even brighter shining on snow and at high altitude.

We all stayed in Nevada on the eastern side of Tahoe for pretty cheap at the Sierra Motel. Sunday morning we departed early for Round Top, which is located conveniently near Kirkwood ski resort. With everyone gathered at the trailhead, we were 18 deep! I know Arun felt a bit overwhelmed, but having led this trip for nearly 15 years, he knows the route real well and I knew he’d be up for the challenge.

The trail from the Carson Pass “sno-park” parking area gave way to forest and some careful route finding. It is nice to follow along on a planned trip, because usually the person in front of you knows where they’re going! The forest gave way to rolling hills and our first view of Round Top. The snow conditions were prime in the morning, grippy, semi-frozen crust over loose corn.

In case you are wondering, to ascend snow on skis one must have a mechanism on the bottom of them to prevent you from sliding backwards. Hence we glue "skins" to the bottoms, these are commonly synthetic hair-like fur pads which allow you to slide up, but not in reverse. Getting closer to the mountain, we paused for another moment to get our bearings in this huge basin. I would be curious to see this whole area when it is snowless.

The climb up was pretty straight forward. However, since myself and the leader were on skis, perhaps our route up tended to be steep, on snowshoes it can be difficult to traverse steep slopes. Coming back down, we made sure to take a much more gradual way.

After a while the "shoulder" of Round Top became too steep for skis, so out came the crampons and ice axe! This was really the highlight of my climb, proper steepness! Of course mounting crampons on tele boots is not always the best fit, I managed just fine. It was pretty exciting to swing the ice axe and stomp out your feet in the snow. In the photo below you can see the shoulder where the highest people are.

The absolute hardest part of this tour was the ski descent. The snow was probably the worst quality I have ever skied in my life. There was a solid frozen crust over lighter pow, which made turns near impossible on the tele. Occasionally I get really spanked by conditions, and that day at Round Top Peak was one of them. I won't deny though, that falling on every turn and doing face plants is real humbling, sometimes nature has to reveal who the boss is. Keeps me in check when I start to get too cocky. After awhile you get good at falling and know to just tuck and roll.

We tried to traverse much of the way down, and I surprised some colleagues when I turned around to snap a Kodak. There was some debate on whether to put the skins back on the skis to ascend the few rolling hills back to the sno-park. Since we were waiting for a colleague I decided to do it (but i took them off later), the idea being to make going uphill easier, but downhills were of course slower from the extra drag, others left the skins off.

A final view of Round Top Peak, bye bye for now!