Skiing the Range
of Light
of Light
Yosemite: steeps, powder, and one miner's dream hotel
BY BRIAN LITZ
Tioga Pass Resort consists of a half dozen private and dorm-style log cabins grouped around a cavernous log structure built by Al Gardinsky, a Russian prospector-turned-innkeeper, more than 80 years ago. It's situated on Highway 120, the only paved road crossing a 200-mile curtain of granite in the southern Sierra, and the sole eater access to Yosemite National Park. During the summer, the lodge is a way station for a perpetual rush hour of tourists. In winter, the unplowed road is buried under snow, and the resort becomes the center of some of the safest and most varied and easily accessed backcountry skiing in North America. To reach the lodge in winter, you drive along Highway 395, the main north –south artery in these parts, to the town of Lee Vining, and then switch to skis, snowshoes, or a snow cat for the final 6.3 miles.
Tioga Pass Resort and a handful of similar lodges sprinkled across North America attract skiers who want to claim the adventurous spirit of the backcountry without delving into winter camping. You sleep in a comfortable cabin instead of a snow cave and sit down to chef-prepared meals instead of ramen boiled over your Whisperlite. Perhaps most important, at these lodges you can benefit form the expertise of skilled backcountry guides.
Craig was lobbying hard for a trip up one of the area's classic chutes, Dana Couloir, which drops at a consistent 40-degree angle. But it was our first afternoon at the lodge, and Craig's wife, Deb, and I insisted on an easier, quicker tour. We launched from the deck of our cabin into the forested valley, then contoured up through a drainage toward tree line on Gaylor Peak to the west. Eventually we struck a ridge and emerged into the soft, purplish late daylight. With each foot of elevation gain, the panorama expanded until were overlooking an endless parade of peaks in Yosemite and the Ansel Adams Wilderness. As an evening gust swirled snowflakes around us, we turned tail, dropping down through roller-coaster terrain toward the main lodge. Other than a few ski tracks -mainly our own- we saw no signs of people in the snowy miles around us.
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Once we entered the confines of Chute Out, one of the area's most spectacular runs, our switchbacks became progressively tighter and more precarious. We'd shuffle a few steps, plant our poles, catch our breath, kick turn one ski, stand with feet splayed a la Charlie Chaplin, then twirl the second ski around. As the powder finally faded into a sketchier, wind-scoured surface, our upward progress and enthusiasm for climbing ground to a halt. And besides, gravity was calling.
Craig was wearing free-heel cable bindings and beefy plastic telemark boots, while Deb and I were using Alpine-touring gear, less popular in the States but standard issue for decades in the Alps. We'd climbed with our heels free, like Craig, but now locked them down with the flick of a switch, turning our touring setups into conventional downhill rigs. There are several advantages to Alpine-touring equipment, but here's the big one: If you're an expert skier at the resort, Alpine-touring gear will let you make expert turns in the backcountry; telemark gear will transform you (at least temporarily) into a flailing novice.
Deb headed down first, snapping off a clean series of arcs. Then Craig and I hopped the gravity freight train and leapfrogged each other with exhilarating jump turns down the narrow stone shaft before being ejected on to the seamless slopes at its base. We rejoined Deb and continued downward, our thighs smoldering, to the lake 2,000 feet below.
That night, at the resort's main lodge, we kicked back around an oversize wood-burning stove and traded powder stories with the other guests, and eclectic group that included software designers, and aspiring actor, and an adventure-travel tour operator. Then Bob and Claudette Agard, the gregarious, fifty something owners of the lodge, laid out a devastating spread of gourmet alpine comfort food: a half dozen soups, turkey, mashed potatoes, and for dessert, something I never expected to see in the Sierra backcountry – key lime pie made with real key limes.
Nicknamed the Range of Light by John Muir because of its moody atmospherics and reflective granite peaks and buttresses, the Sierra is considered by many to be America's best backcountry ski range. I stood outside after dinner, watching as the evening sky spilled alpenglow across the peaks. Beyond them were dozens of mountains, hundreds of potential runs. John Moynier, a good friend of mine and one of the eastern Sierra's premier guides and avalanche experts, says that outsiders typically underestimate his home mountains: "No matter where they come from – the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, Colorado – nearly all new Sierra skiers fail to understand the vertical relief, enormity, and remoteness of the range." This week, only 20 skiers and snowboarders were staying at Tioga Pass Resort; we could each have our own ridgeline. Just two days into my Sierra baptism, I was already beginning to see the light.