Lake O'Hara - Lovely
Trip date: Tuesday Mar 21, 2023
Submitted by Ray Yong
Particpants:
me
Discussion:
Reading Chuck's review of Lake O'Hara the other day reminded me I hadn't been up there yet this year, and the weather being what it is, it looks like my opportunities are dwindling, so I thought I'd give it a shot this morning. Left the trailhead at 0830, temp -20 and headed up. Tracks were rock hard but still had a good combination of grip and glide on my skin skis (glad I had a new layer of glide wax!). I think this is the first time I've skied to O'Hara in machine tracks in years. Boy it's a lot faster! Even with lots of camera stops I made it up in 2 hrs. Temp was about -5 at the lake, and got steadily warmer while I was there. Not a cloud to be seen, and no wind. Definitely not the conditions I usually get when I'm there. Hung around for about an hour and a half, and then headed down, and was back at the trailhead in 40 minutes.
On the way back, tracks were icing over, so I'm not sure how glazed they'll be tomorrow. The snow is really hard-packed, but still has enough slop to allow a (relatively) controlled descent, even on non-metal edged skis, and despite the snowmobile tread tracks in the middle. As you'd expect, conditions varied greatly between sun-exposed areas, and those in shadow.