It’s been a month since our last trip to Mount Lola. There’s still quite a bit of snow out there. Most of that snow is still in good spring condition, even on the first official day of summer. It just requires a long approach drive and hike these days.
On our last trip, we were faced with a long approach hike due to some downed trees across the road and snow covered trails. One month later and those trees were gone, as was the lower elevation snow on the trail. That meant that we got our chance to challenge the “Jan Michael Vincent Stunt Bridge”, leading to a slow tedious 4WD climb up to the northern ridge of Lola. We laughed that my Tom Tom referred to this road as County Hwy 451, even though it was an 8 foot wide dirt road littered with rocks the size of toasters. We later found it referred to every one of 10 dirt roads we travelled today with the same name. It must be Tom Tom’s code for “This road sucks.”
We parked our truck and packed our skis for the approach hike, which amounted to a bit more than a mile, to the first patch. Our destination was for the long patch off the northwest face of Lola. About half way there, I let my partners move on to the big patch, and headed back downhill to the first patch. Today I wanted to invest more energy into lapping a patch rather than hiking. Rossi and I enjoyed three laps on the lower patch, which offered about 1000 feet of smooth snow at a nice pitch for both skiing and the return hikes.
Meanwhile my ski partners reported a nice long ski down the main patch that was followed by a long and hot hike out back to the truck. It was a great day for summer skiing. Mount Lola continues to offer good snow for those that can’t get enough.
Updated: Added a couple of more photos
