Historic Donner Summit, June 12, 2017

By the twelfth of June most schools are out for summer. Is the first thing that comes to mind powder skiing? Yes!

Here is Spence’s description:
“We hit up Historic Donner Summit at around 3:15. Visibility was classic San Francisco Ocean Beach-styled fog and heavy mist (you could not see “Poop Chute” from the road). After mulling over several options, we ended up skiing a super low-angle knoll right off the road. Snow was about 4 inches of thick&wet on a packed, yet soft base. It was also starting to form breakable crust. While we didn’t kick off any serious wet slides, all of our turns looked like drunken snowboarder turns (it ended up looking like somebody raked the entire slope, instead of nice figure 8’s). Pretty sure steeper terrain would have slid.”

Historic Donner Summit. We skied the snow patch across the road.

Spence making fresh tracks.

Stev gettin, wet n sloppy…

…and skiing above the Tacomama…

Spence finding his way through the fog.

Stev using Spence’s tracks to find his way through the fog.

Spence takes another run.

Stev takes another run.

A panoramic view of the Historic Donner Summit snow patch.

If you look closely through the fog you can see our smeared tracks.

While this was not your typical powder day, it was still fun to ski fresh snow.