Incline Peak to King's Beach traverse

With crappy snow firmly in effect, Jeff and Sue instigated an SST for Jan. 22.

But Jeff didn't get clearance from his shoulder doc to ski, and Sue received an invitation to an art opening in SF that she couldn't refuse, leaving the planning for this one in a bit of disarray and definitely very last second (sorry if we missed you).

But Beth, Kim, Shaggie and I managed to rally and put together a good one. The traverse was easy, the snow actually supportable and pleasant up high, sticky but not excessively evil down low.

We started on the Mt. Rose Highway, traversed the saddle of Incline Peak, rounded Third Creek, dropped a corn lap in Second Creek, skinned back around First Creek to Rifle Peak.

From there, it was a fast traverse to the shoulder of Mt. Baldy & a fun descent to a neighborhood stroll through the King's Beach grid to our shuttle car, parked conveniently at Mike and Pam LeFrancois' house.

As Shaggy noted: "Very Euro!"

This went amazingly slick, actually, considering you can't see *anything* in KB from Baldy...just a sea of very similar-looking trees.

I was braced for a long afternoon of wandering around in the woods, but happily settled for a taco at El Mercado instead. Beth even made it home in time for Dr. Jim's b-day!

Does anyone know what this weird sign is about? It's just off the saddle between Incline Peak and Rose Peak and none of us has ever noticed it before.

A scratchy bit. We removed our skis--well, Shaggy ripped it :)

Map check.

Nice terrain on the backside of Rifle Peak. We figured out that this is likely the least dolorous route from Rose to Glenshire.

Google Maps link.

A few years back, Beth, Gayle and Virginia were attacked by a Blue Grouse when they did a similar SST traverse that stayed high all the way to Brockway summit rather than dropping into KB.