But for my money the best view of deep time is Baden Powell from Mountain High, with the Vincent Thrust Fault cutting across the mountain - an ancient sea floor diving down into the earth, exhumed for us to be awestruck.
Table Mtn is spiritually a lot like Snow Valley - and in fact it’s a slice of the San Bernardino Mtns relocated to the San Gabriels by our friendly transform faults.
Last weekend the kids and I hit Snow Valley (last pic) Saturday and Mountain High on Sunday. I love Snow Valley’s view of the high San Gabriels and Gorgonio, and its ancient boulder-strewn topography with decomposed granite soil is a stark contrast to Blue Ridge’s tumultuous Pelona Schist.
Table Mtn is a special place for me because of all the great summer memories I have there, and I’m so lucky I was able to add winter to that. As always with the San G’s the terrain gets bigger when you get back in there, but I still made it home at 1:58pm for my 2:00pm meeting.
I knew I’d have to hike back up whatever I skied down but I couldn’t resist. The campground would be better in firmer faster snow because it’s so flat, but that would be bad for the steeps below, making it a bit of an enigmatic pursuit.
Before all the snow melted (2/23/26) I checked off one that’s been on my list for a long time: Table Mtn campground with its big beautiful pines, desert views, and mellow slopes. The snow went surprisingly far down the north side and the slopes got a lot steeper there!
We’re lucky we dodged that one but wow a lot of snow melted in a week.
And after that storm cycle, right back to the pattern we’ve had all winter of above-freezing temperatures all night at the 7000’-8000’ level, with even Wrightwood getting the inversion. 😕
A sparkling clear day in the Central Valley! Half Dome in Yosemite was visible from my Keyes Road viewpoint. #halfdome
All I want is that sequence of storms, every week, from November 15 through April 15. Is that too much to ask for?
The line clearly went that day in March but I didn’t try it. And sometime between March and May, it went in an enormous avalanche. I was there before and I was there after… I knew it was dangerous, and still is, but I still feel the pull… does that line go today, after the recent storms?
My heart goes out to everyone affected by the Castle Peak avalanche disaster. A lot of people lost someone close, maybe even more than one person. It’s reminded me of my own personal white whale in Sheep Canyon. March 2023 found the cliffs and chutes buried under a tremendous amount of snow.
👀
Hundreds of pupfish at Salt Creek in Death Valley! The flood damaged boardwalk has been replaced and is a nice walk. The fish have survived here since the ice ages in water that at times is three times as salty as the sea and sometimes as much as 100° (1/2)
The bad thing about being a SoCal backcountry skier is you might have almost no snow in early February. The good thing about being a SoCal backcountry skier is that you only need one storm to be in business. 🤞
Man this is super bleak for the Salt/Gila basin in AZ/NM and the Colorado River in general. And not looking great for the State Water Project in California with those numbers on the northern Sierra.
Every descent is a first descent.
For me it’s just a different kind of feeling. The future is wide open: endless horizons. Every time you stand at the top of a mountain, it’s the first time you’ve been there as the person you are on that day, in that weather, with that sun & snow, that mountain mood. How can you compare trips?
Competition is part of human nature and I suppose it’s inevitable for popular physical activities to go this way. The social media era has of course brought a lot of self-imposed individual competition like trying to complete some list of backcountry lines, trying for speed records, etc.
The people competing in this event are incredible athletes and it’s obviously a passion for them. For me it’s weird for ski mountaineering to be a competitive sport bc one of the things I like best about it is the lack of competitive pressure. www.latimes.com/sports/olymp...
On the plus side no one here paid Park City prices for these conditions. www.instagram.com/reel/DUQoLpZ...
Connective sunny day thunderstorms over the San Gabriels? in February?? Sure why not. Right on brand for this winter.
Ugh finally get that damnable ridge off California
Thanks! This station is in a gentle valley near (but not quite at) the top of Table Mountain at the LA/SB County border above the high desert. Big Pines seems to experience these bursts too. Temperature stays remarkably constant.
Random question if you have a second! bsky.app/profile/tran...
Table Mountain is so fascinating as a reflection of the air mass over the Mojave Desert. Incredibly little diurnal variation! But what I’m really curious about is the relatively quick crashes in dew points. -30F!? What causes that?
A cold start in Big Bear and Wrightwood with a shallow inversion back in WW. Super dry air at 7000’ with dew points down to -20F!
I do wonder if, despite the dry weather lately, the record warmth and rain of Oct-Dec kept soil moisture and transpiration higher than normal, keeping surface dew points higher than models would pick up on?
Note the unusual inversion that had kept Wrightwood colder is gone. Same story at Big Bear area resorts (images Snow Valley and Snow Summit, weather at Valley).
Finally! I’m sure SoCal ski area managers are breathing a nice dry sigh of relief after humidity finally crashed allowing the return of snowmaking weather. Everyone was set up last night but it was too humid for snowmaking despite temps near freezing. Here’s Mountain High.
