After nine winters living in Tahoe and skiing the backcountry I am always stoked to get out and do something new. Since I'm somewhat of a creature of habit there are way more things that I haven't done out there than things I have. I suppose that I tend to get into a groove with the places I ski, and I often find that I just do what is easier, or closer. This was not the case yesterday. A friend of Lynn and I suggested that we go ski Pyramid Peak in Desolation Wilderness. In the photograph above, Pyramid is on the left, Mt. Price is on the right, and Jack's peak is in the foreground, pictured from the summit of Dick's Peak. At 9,983 feet, Pyramid Peak is the highest point in the wilderness and one of the most aesthetic mountains in the region. We chose to access this peak from the closest main road, and we parked our car around 6,000 feet at the Horsetail Falls parking area off of Highway 50. The hike brings you up a southeast facing ridge to start and at that elevation the snow was a little thin... We had a bit of an interesting bushwack to start out our day.After ascending about 500 feet or so we were out of the thinly covered rocks and bushes and up onto a prominent ridge that would lead us all the way to the top of Pyramid Peak. While the summit isn't very close to where we parked getting there was quite straightforward and the navigation was simple, once you were out of the bushes. In the photo below Lynn approaches the Southeast side of Pyramid Peak about 3 hours into our hike...
After hanging out at the summit for a while we dropped in on our objective, the north face of Pyramid. Having only viewed this face from a distance I always thought that it was way longer and steeper than it actually was. The snow on the north side was still nice and powdery despite the unseasonably warm temperatures that we've had lately and the skiing was great. Here's a shot of the north side of Pyramid with good coverage, many seasons this doesn't fill in well enough to be able to ski it without walking over rocks...
After skiing the north side we traversed back around and skied a variety of terrain and snow conditions near the route that we came up. Coverage was great and the terrain interesting most of the way back down to the car. Things got a little spicy once we got back down below 6500 feet or so, but with some good route finding, a little bit of bush skiing, and some questionable creek crossings we made it out of there with no problems at all.

Today I headed into the Lake Tahoe Backcountry with my friends Dave and Oscar.  Since the past week has been off the hook, we decided to continue the trend and go big.  A desolation mission was in order and our plan did not dissappoint.  We started at Eagle Falls around 9:00 am.  After the past week, starting a little later was no problem.  We hiked to our first destination of the day, Dick's Peak.  At almost 10,000 feet, it one of the highest peaks around, and only 4 hours from the car!  Here's a shot of Oscar shredding windbuff off the summit of Dicks.  It was wind affected, but still pretty good.  

Welcome to spring in Lake Tahoe.  Bout time to head down to the east side.  Pray for snow!!!.

Jeremy

The approach was daunting, and it involved summiting Jakes skiing the backside and then hiking to the summit of Crag. We made it up there in good time and had a nice drop in the sunshine. With super thin snow conditions we had only one option for our descent, but the possibilities are pretty endless on a big year. There is some pretty good coverage out in desolation wilderness.

The face of Crag Peak is steep, really steep. Even more exciting than the pitch of the face is the three cliff bands that you need to negotiate on a 50 degree slope. After a good ski with some really impressive exposure we were only about halfway there. We had a nice long skin back to the top of Jakes and nice corny run down the south side. Seven hours of hiking and worth every step.

Get yourself some Marker Dukes and get out and ski somewhere you've never been before. The backcountry is still skiing great, nice spring snow on the south faces and sugary cold pow in the shadows. Have fun out there and pray for snow.