Hi everyone,

Penelope and I are thinking of skiing a bit in the Sierra next week after the storm track leaves. We are hoping to go up Taboose Pass and head North exiting at Bishop Pass. I would really appreciate if anyone more local to the area, could give me a bit of info on the conditions. We have not been in the Sierra backcountry this spring so I'm hoping for a bit of a snow report. If there is enough of the white stuff, we are going...

Not first-hand info, but this would be the closest I have seen recently:

from bcd splitboard.com thread

from Mike thebackcountry.net thread

I would greatly appreciate an update if you do make the trip.

Cheers

Pen and I just got back. We carried our skis up Taboose Pass, skied and carried down to about 10,000 on the other side, looked toward Mather Pass and abandoned the trip.

There is virtually no snow to ski on in the Sierra at 11,000 feet. The conditions at and around Taboose Pass remind me of late June in normal snow season. IMO, give it three weeks and you can walk anywhere up to 13,000' without encountering much snow at all.

We will try the trip again next year.

asmrz wrote:There is virtually no snow to ski on in the Southern Sierra at 11,000 feet.

Fixed it for ya. Gotta look further north. Try Tioga Pass.

I'm not interested in skiing at or around Tioga Pass.

Taboose Pass 5/11 - 5/12: http://kathywing.smugmug.com/California ... &k=vNGMVxm

I didn't go over the pass, but did look over from Striped. Easy creek crossing and just a few patches of easy to cross snow all the way to the pass area. The snow fields around Taboose and on the way to Striped were pleasant to walk on with very little postholing going on even later in the day, but a lot of that snow is over rubble and tundra type terrain and not bigger rocks and boulders; so that keeps down the number of gaps there are to sink into. Not much depth to the snow either; so unless you sink into the void you don't sink far unless you run into a drift. There are some tiny suncups - If the snow lasts, the suncups are bound to grow.