Skiing Lake Fork Peak in June

Synopsis

PJ and I took advantage of a decent snow year to get a June ski descent (not bad for the Land of Manana) of our favorite local peak, Lake Fork Peak (12881'). We did an early morning 2 hour drive from Los Alamos, NM to the Williams Lake trailhead near Taos Ski Valley and started hiking around 6:30am. Our total elevation climbed was just over 3000' with an estimated roundtrip mileage of about 6 miles and a car-to-car time of about 6 hours.

Trailhead information

To get to the Williams Lake trailhead parking area, take NM State Route 150 to the Taos Ski Valley parking area. From the NE corner of the parking area, find and take Twining Rd (dirt road) for about 2 miles to the hikers' parking lot which will be on the right side of the road after some switchbacks. This dirt road gets fairly steep, but normal passenger cars will be OK as long as the road is snow/ice free. From the parking lot, follow a well-beaten path heading S from the SW corner of the parking lot. Shortly you will pass the Bavarian Restaurant (good German beers/grub although they are generally closed from early April through late May) and come to the bottom of a ski lift. In early/mid spring, this is generally where you can start skinning. Head up the slope (past the lodge) and turn left at a small shack called Black Diamond Espresso (too bad it's only open when the lifts are running). This is the start of the Williams Lake Trail.

Approach and climb

Being this late in the spring, we had to hike about 3/4 mile to just before the Wheeler Peak Wilderness boundary sign before we could put our skis on. Even after that, there were places where we had to dismount and do the ski-carry:

Upon reaching the rise just north of Williams Lake, we headed SE into the trees and shortly came out into the clearing:

Earlier in the spring, this entire clearing is completely covered by snow, and you can skin in any direction you want. Today, there were big piles of talus showing, and we actually had to scramble over some sections of talus, and it took some effort to find the skinnable line:

We chose to skin up the side drainage just to the NE of Lake Fork Peak:


In a short while, we went around the corner and started heading SW up Lake Fork's NE face:





We reached the summit about 3 hours after we started hiking, and we were rewarded with amazing views on a gorgeous day.

Time to ski!

After about 15 minutes on the summit, we clicked in for perfect soft spring snow.


There was a narrow strip of snow high on the NE face that gave us a continuous descent:





The snow was so good we decided to boot up one of the short (~400' vertical) north facing chutes off the east ridge of Lake Fork Peak:



It was a pleasant snow climb and we reached the notch. It was about 10:40am.



After a short break, we skied the chute in prime conditions.





Then we had to find our way through the talus again:


We managed to ski all the way down to near the wilderness boundary sign, where we put the skis back onto the packs for the short hike out.



We got back to the car around 12:30pm to cold beer. Another awesome day in the backcountry.

Useful links

Northern New Mexico Avalanche Exchange
Taos Ski Valley
Lists of John

Images

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