TR: Castle Peak, California USA

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Castle Peak north of I-80 in California, April 19th, 2005

The annual last minute tax frenzy and two sick kids over
the weekend had convinced me that taking a day off work and just
putzing around in the mountains was what I needed on Tuesday. I
also had a new pair of skis to try out, 165cm Fischer T-Stix
Stingrays' w/dynafit bindings. Unlike my usual weekend jaunts I
got a very late start and did not pull into the snow park area
off I-80 until shortly after 9am. Normally in April, this would
mean at most 2-3 hrs of skiing before the slush becomes
unbearable. However, when I stepped out of the car it felt more
like mid-january than mid-April. 25 degrees F with a strong wind
and snow spitting from the overcast.

It appeared that there had been a freak local storm overnight
and there was 4-5 inches of fresh powder being blown around.
Encouraged by this lucky freak of the weather, I headed off to
the top of Andesite Peak[1] to get some windblown powder turns in
before the clouds broke up and the sun came out. The wind was
blowing quite hard all the way up and any open spot was scoured
down to bare crust. I got to the top of Andesite and looked for
downwind trees. There was a pretty cohesive wind slab that was
poorly bonded to the underlying crust on the peak, so I looked
for lower angles and wind shadows. In the trees, the powder was
up to a foot deep in spots. Very nice for the middle of April..

After a couple runs, the sun started coming out and I decided
to head over to the west facing trees on Castle Peak. On the
way I checked out the Peter Grubb hut and there is still at least
8 feet of snow on the ground there. I got two more runs in and
decided to call it a day.

My first experience with using Dynafit's was mostly pleasant
although they do take more futzing about switching modes than
other AT bindings. The relatively weightless feeling on the
climbs is well worth it. I even managed a few hundred yards
of skating on them. Skating works quite well with these bindings
and the relatively soft TLT4 boot if you remember to lock the
toe in tour mode first[2]. Descending on the Fischer's was really
quite good once I remembered to stick with soft boot techniques.
I think that's about as wide a ski as I could drive easily with
the TLT4 and you could definitely get more out of them with a
beefier boot.


_ Booker C. Bense

[1]- http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=...lon=-120.36556

[2]- You'll learn quickly after the first couple face plants.

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