TRIP REPORT: June 19, 2005, Bishop Pass, CA

The e-mail sounded great—get out under the clouds of Southern California’s June Gloom and get dirt under our fingernails with a camp and ski weekend in the Sierras. That is until Matt Hansen and I made the ‘brainy’ decision to escape the traffic of Southern California at 5:30 on a Friday night, and haul our packs, skis, and boots in a most disorganized fashion up a suncup-filled trail.

After finally surviving the ‘I want to end my life’ traffic, we arrived in Bishop, California late Friday night. Being veterans from the Rockies and relative rookies in the Sierras, Matt and I decided to acquire some local knowledge of where to ski. We assumed that with 100 inches above the average snowfall this past winter, the Sierras were holding enough quality snow for early summer turns. As I was perusing around the outdoor store, I noticed Matt was speaking to the shop manager about the skiing conditions. You know those kinds of outdoor shop guys with the high shorts and socks, balding hair, old man’s breath, and the signature chuckle after nearly every sentence as if he is reminding us how extensive his familiarity is with the region? Well, we encountered him Saturday morning.

“We were wondering where the good skiing is right now,” Matt ambivalently asked the old man.

“Well, I’m sorry boys, but I hope you brought your suncup skis,” [insert signature chuckle here] said the Santa Clause look a like as I attempted to elude the cloud of his aged, smelly breath.

Eventually, we took into account the old man’s chuckling advice and chose to stay close and begin our expedition from South Lake to our ski destination of Bishop Pass.

Once we reached South Lake, we divvied up the gear and realized our backpack inefficiencies. Immediately, we questioned the amount of gear we had as we threw on our Goliath-sized packs complete with skis, a daypack, and boots. In fact, Matt laughed at me the entire hike because of all the crap hanging off my pack as I repeatedly struggled to reach for my Nalgene, which probably was extremely comical to any passing hikers.

The hike proved to be a test of strength, because of the weight of our packs and the somewhat snow-covered trail. We arrived at our beautiful campsite at Long Lake in the John Muir Wilderness about two miles from the parking lot. Following our sweat-filled hike, we downed a few refreshing Tecate’s and began hiking a short, north-facing slope adjacent to our campsite.

Surprisingly, the old man was right: We should’ve brought our suncup skis. Suncups are small depressions in the snow formed by melting and evaporation resulting from direct exposure to the sun—in short, they’re a pain in the ass to hike and ski on. The slope was super suncupped, but, nevertheless, making about 10 turns in mid-June on bluebird days never becomes monotonous. Returning to camp we were forced to wade barefoot across a raging creek, as footbridges had either been submerged or washed away in the spring torrent. We prepared camp and ate our dinner while admiring our first turns of the summer before we tucked in for the below freezing temperatures of the near-full moon evening.