So it’s been a while since I’ve been on the snow and online. Tomorrow will be August first and it feels like the summer is just flying by! I was supposed to arrive in New Zealand a few days ago for the World Heli Challenge. Unfortunately that didn’t happen but I suppose spending time in Tahoe during the summer isn’t all that bad.

Since I got back from Europe I’ve been running around California. Immediately on my return I was invited to go to The North Face actions sports summit in San Leandro, CA. It was my first of hopefully many team summits for The North Face. It was really cool to get involved and see just how important athlete feedback was to them. That and the team trip to a shooting range was pretty sweet as well. Seeing Ingrid Backstrom and the rest of the ladies firing away was quite a site!

I returned to Tahoe to enjoy the second summer I’ve ever spent up by the lake during the 6 years I’ve been living in Tahoe. Tahoe received and amazing amount of snow towards the end of the season. Unseasonably low temps kept the snow around much longer than usual. My good friend Iris Lazz and I decided to take advantage of all this snow and hike Mt. Tallac over on the west shore of Lake Tahoe. It’s one of those peaks that you just have to do if you venture out into the Tahoe backcountry. We decided to turn the trip into an overnighter. We drove out to the trail head and packed all of our gear and threw it on our backs.

With all our camping gear and riding gear on our backs we hiked 1.5 miles in to our camp spot. That was probably the heaviest load I’ve ever carried. I really could of used a light touring setup on that trip.

There was no snow at the site and we were not sure how much longer we would have to hike til we could start skinning and snow shoeing. We decided to drop most of our gear and grab it on our way down. It was probably about two miles til we hit enough snow to skin on. We were so excited to finally hit snow. Our day packs were maxed out with weight.

So as we soon discovered this was really only a giant patch of snow amongst many other giant patches of snow. We soon hit dirt, and then snow and then some more dirt. After a brief moment of relief with my skins on and boots off my back I soon discovered that would be short lived. It was much easier to just leave the gear on my back and hike in my shoes. Had I known that I probably would of brought much lighter skis and left my skins at home. Oh well…

After about six hours we had finally reached the top of the peak! We had decided it would be best to ski down the front side and make a loop out of our trip. That meant dropping our skis and board off at the car and hiking back in to retrieve the tent. It sounded like a great idea at the time.

We met some critters on the way down…

Finally it was time to go skiing! This was by far the best moment of the day. It seemed as if all our hard work was worth it.

Iris and I both thought we were on our way home til we ended up here.

So this part just sucked! From here on out it was a miracle we both made it out alive. I think our patience was beginning to run thin and our bodies were starting to hate us. We made it out of the boulder field probably a half hour later only to find ourselves bush whacking through manzanita and sliding down through lose rocks. I think it took another three hours after I took off my skis to make it back to my car. That would of been great if we didn’t have to hike an additional 3 miles in order to grab the rest of our gear at the camp site. It was definitely one of those adventures you are happy you accomplished even though you spent a large portion of the time wondering why!