In the morning I drove up to Castle Lake because I hadn't seen my old friend, (my favorite Glacier cut natural alpine lake on Earth) that I have found so far (that I can drive to). (I really like the blue glacier lakes in Shastina (the volcanic cone on Mt. Shasta at about 12,000 feet) but I have only climbed up there once in the 1970s with a friend starting from Horse Camp (The Sierra Club Emergency Rescue Lodge) on Mt. Shasta. A few of us were going to meet at my friends house to ski once again from Bunny Flats down to 7 mile curve on Everette Memorial Hwy on Mt. Shasta. I sort of hoped the ski conditions would be as good as they were for this several mile run. The previous skiing was great except the top two inches kept slipping out from under one on a slope. So we had to be careful we didn't slide sideways into trees and injure ourselves.
This time the conditions were a little more difficult. My skis kept unexpectedly sinking in up to 6 inches vertically at any time as I moved forward. When you can't see when this is going to happen it is really hard to stay on your skis. Since I only come up here now about 1 to 3 or more times a year from the Greater San Francisco Bay area where I live now I started complaining about the route being chosen because I was either going to get injured falling or I was going to run into a tree (one or the other) under these conditions. Finally, since these guys live up here and can get really good over a season they listened to me and let me lead the route so I wouldn't keep having these problems which were endangering me and my body(I like to keep alive an uninjured). So, the second half of the gully run down from Bunny Flats to 7 mile curve I really started to enjoy myself rather than worrying about ending up in the hospital and getting rescued. So, alls well that ends well. It was another really great ski. (At least the 2nd half of the run). And on June 1st. I personally haven't seen conditions like this since around this time in 1974 personally. In other words you usually don't have 12 or more feet of snow at Bunny Flats on June 1st like you do this year.
But in February or March and even sometimes even into April snow 12 to 25 or more feet deep at Bunny Flats and higher in elevation isn't unusual most years. Even this time two days ago one of our party went upside down into a tree well while skiing and was hanging from his skis down into the tree well and had to be rescued by another skier. He said he could have rescued himself but it would have taken a half an hour to figure out how to undo his skis without falling deeper into the tree well.
Everyone of our party both days were using cross country skis. One pair had no metal edges but the rest did. Some used the wider variety of skis that might sometimes be called mountaineering skis that also have metal edges that some put "skins" on to climb mountains covered with snow and then ski down.
note: "Skins" are no longer animal hides they are usually more similar to velcro plastic pieces than anything else that strap to the bottom of your skis for going uphill at a steep angle. You then take them off and put them in your pack when you want to ski back down the mountain or hill.
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