Skiing Brokeoff Mountain
Alex and I set out on a ski mountaineering adventure in Lassen National Park. Since it was my first time trying ski mountaineering, rather than going for the highest peak in the park, we decided that the second highest one, Brokeoff Mountain, would be a reasonable objective. An ancient volcano, Mount Tehama, formed Brokeoff Mountain and other peaks when it collapsed.
We started by “skinning”, which is skiing uphill using fabric on the bottom of the skis.
After a few hours, we could see the peak ahead of us. We continued up and left until we reached a saddle point.
From the saddle point, we had a fairly straight path ahead of us to the peak. When on skis or snowshoes, there’s no need to follow a predefined trail - you can choose the path that looks the best at the time. We skinned up a little bit, but it quickly became too steep for skis. We took off our skis and strapped them to our backpacks, and continued upwards using ice axes. There were a few short 30 degree sections, but it wasn’t too bad.
Finally, we reached the summit! The mountain itself was striking, with several feet of snow covering the rocky, jagged face. We had great views of Lassen Peak as well as Mount Shasta in the distance.
We put on our skis again to begin the descent.
I had fun skiing downhill for a little while, but unfortunately, once we crossed back over the saddle point, the snow was all in the shade. Without the sun’s heat, the soft snow we had ascended had all turned into ice, and I could not manage to ski down it. I then had to bootpack the most of the rest of the way down the mountain, which was okay, but took several hours longer than anticipated.
All in all, it was an adventurous first day mountaineering.
