The plan seemed simple enough: hike up the east side of Castle Peak and ski an east facing strip that is clearly visible from I-80. Of course simple plans rarely stay as such--they always seem to become more complicated. It took me about an hour-and-40-minutes to hike up to the strip, but once at the top I decided to poke around a bit. This decision was wholly influenced by two factors: 1. I had never been up to the summit of Castle Peak and 2. there was a ton of snow lurking along the ridge and beyond that hadn't been visible from down below. 20 solid minutes of poking about resulted in the discovery of a cache of chutes on the north facing backside. I counted between 5 and 8 possible chutes, but it was hard to tell if all of them went or not. Of course their pull was too strong and after a little more recon I ended up skiing two of the bunch that definitely went top-to-bottom. While the runs were dotted with infant sun-cups, the snow was soft enough that my skis just smeared over the emerging dimples. Since I was solo I opted to dry hike on the trail back to the ridge for my second chute schuss. Sadly, due to semi-time constraints I was only able to ski the two chutes before it was time to head back and ski the initial strip that was the impetus of my trek. My hike out was more or less without incident other than miscalculating my exit by about 1/2 mile. All told the journey took 7.5 hours from truck to snow and back again. I managed to squeeze a minimum of 22 turns out of each run, as well. Long, tiring, but extremely rewarding day.
“The best place in the world to ski is where you’re skiing that day.” — Warren Miller
