Its been a few days since it has snowed in Lake Tahoe, and apparently we've already entered into a corn cycle, something I like to call "Insta-corn". Yesterday I headed to the south side of Jakes peak to see exactly what was going on with the snow in the backcountry and I was delighted to find excellent corn-like conditions, and no tracks anywhere. Today I returned with a few friends and bumped into Sierra legend Jim Zellers and the infamous Ralph Backstrom with a similar plan. Lucky for me I'd already gotten it good the day before, so I let my buddies go first. Not much had changed since yesterday and the runs were still pretty darn smooth, though really thin cover and a lot of wacky little rock chokes and whatnot.We skied a couple laps and found that the best snow was on south to east facing slopes, anything else is still in the transition phase and is pretty weird. Somehow I managed to put on my GoPro helmet cam for the first lap and it looked a little something like this....

Sorry that clip is 2 minutes long, but its a pretty long run. Nothing all that gnarly but lots of fun on smooth snow. I also made sure to shoot a few pictures while we were out, and unfortunately the scenery is just terrible.... Even hiking shots look cool with Emerald Bay in the background. Near the bottom:

And again a little closer to the top....

Ralph, having a good ol' time... with the rock garden above him.

And one more scenic. Its a beautiful place we live in, get out and enjoy it when you can.

Getting into the backcountry is easy as ever with tons of great skis that can handle a variety of conditions on the market. My ski of choice is the Elan 1010 which is the probably the best and most versatile ski that I've ever used. It can handle pretty much any condition and is a great width, at 110 mm's underfoot, for just about any day on the hill. Backcountry binding technology has also come a long way. The Marker Duke is a great example. For people who can't afford to have a dedicated backcountry setup the Duke provides the answer. With a DIN range up to 16 this binding can handle an inbounds thrashing and still hike around for days in the backcountry, truly the best of both worlds. Hopefully I'll see you out there.