Baden-Powell Feature Article

  

 

The Joy of Spring:

Tele Skiing On Mt. Baden-Powell

By Mitch Weber, Photos by Jon Myklebust and Mitch

If there is a better way to welcome spring on the first weekend of the new season than to go tele skiing in the local mountains, I don't have any idea what it could be. Sure, the end of winter is always a sad thing to see, long cold powder days will be missed, but for many of us those are in too short of supply anyway. Out here, spring brings us day after day of the most ruling corn skiing. As spring becomes summer, the northward migration continues, until the season finally comes to a close, usually around the first week in August in Tioga Pass, Yosemite.

 Above: Jon in the lower chute. Below right: Climbing the summit ridge

 Mt. Baden-Powell, named after the founder of the Boy Scouts, Lord Robert Baden-Powell, is located in the San Gabriel Mountains in southern California. The peak tops out at about 9,600 feet and offers a superb 3,000 vertical foot descent. The high elevation and the low latitude combine to produce cold nights and warm spring days, this is the recipe for some of the finest corn snow imaginable. There are a number of ways down on both the north and east faces, including a monster "main chute" from top to bottom on the north side. Generally though, the best skiing is in the bowls at the top and a chute extending to the bottom linked by a short tree run in the middle.

Some Thoughts On Spring Skiing

 Powder skiing in winter does have it's rewards, it is hard to deny the bliss found in that heavenly stuff, but spring skiing untracked corn is a special thing. Long sunny days and the bro factor is very high. No dog eat dog, every man for himself ugliness so common on a pow day. There is plenty to go around and there will be more tomorrow, the next day and on and on. This is the essence of tele skiing for us.

 

In the upper bowls, bowls of sweet corn. The terrain here is nice and steep but not really outrageously so!

 Below is a shot looking up from the bottom of the lower chute. Year before last, El Nino brought us a ton of snow and this chute slid from the top. The avalanche funneled through this narrow gap reaching thirty feet up the rock walls, moved across the road just below where this shot was taken and continued down another 1,000 vertical feet into the canyon. Upon hitting the bottom, tons of snow roared across the flats more than a quarter mile and ran UP the canyon wall on the other side. A most impressive sight even well after the fact!

 

Here is another mpeg movie from Baden-Powell, this one is of Big Tim Connolly jump turning the east side. We took a couple of alpine guys up with us, John McColly and Brad Wilson, the marketing guru and the assistant general manger at our local ski area, Mountain High. They had a great time. John can be heard on this mpeg: "that is gnarly!"...they had never been up to Baden before and were very impressed by the mountain and Big Tim's tele skills. That is the backside of Mt. Baldy at the end. For best quality, right click the screen and choose 100 percent from the Zoom selection. Enjoy!

Link to above mpeg

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