OGUL #23 - Rubicon Peak

April 8th, 2023

My goal this winter has simply been to log as many days as possible on my splitboard. It brings me joy regardless of the conditions, a day out splitboarding is a good day. That said, I’ve also been (very) slowly chipping away at the Tahoe Ogul Peak List, and Rubicon was one of the closer ones that I hadn’t ticked off yet. In addition, the conditions lined up in a way that the snow would probably still be decent there.

I wanted to get an earlyish start, so I set my alarm for 4am Saturday morning. I say earlyish, because 2:45am is usually when my “early” alarm for mountain adventures usually goes off. It hurts, but watching the sunrise from a mountain is always worth it. Plus I usually don’t feel too tired once I get a Yerba Mate or a Redbull in me. I was out the door by 4:30 or so, I can’t recall exactly but that seems accurate. Made a quick stop at the Pollock Pines Safeway for some snacks (a terrible grocery store, but it’s on the way and open 24 hours).

I arrived at the trailhead, which is really just a dead end street. I had never been here before, but understood that parking here was a contentious subject. I’m all for being respectful of neighborhoods, but it’s a dead end street, and you shouldn’t need to be a millionaire to access our public lands. I parked my truck as out of the way as possible, and was off right around 7am.

My Truck with a beautiful Tahoe sunrise behind it

I was a little bit torn on which track to follow right after starting, one took a left up ~50 vertical feet higher onto a ridge than the other, and I ended up opting for that one. There were a lot of return tracks through here, so it seemed like the right place to be. The elevation gain was fairly gradual for a while, and soon it opened up to a beautiful long bench heading straight towards the peak. The trees here were clearly very old, something about being among old growth trees really puts me into a peaceful place. As the forest opened up, so did the magnificent views of Tahoe. It was really shaping up to be a nice morning out on the west shore.

Rubicon peak first coming into view from near the start The “bench” below Rubicon

The bench eventually connected to the steeper northeast face of Rubicon, and the trees seemed to get a bit more dense, and the terrain a good bit steeper. I continued along an established skin track up until somewhere around 8200 feet, where I lost it in the wind blown snow and some recent descent tracks. Not to worry though, the plan was pretty simple at this point: go up until you can’t anymore. The view of Tahoe from somewhere near where I lost the skin track

Definitely one of the more scenic tours I’ve done in the Tahoe area

The forest seemed to open up a bit more as I got closer to the top. This were some really nice old trees, and I was having a great time moving through them. I was keeping a really solid pace the whole way up, probably the best pace I had been on all winter. Things always come together during the spring in the mountains. Speaking of spring, it still wasn’t quite feeling like spring. It had snowed a few inches the day before, and there was probably as much as 4 or 5 inches of windblown powder up near the top in shaded areas. Conditions were better than I had been expecting.

The tree spacing opening up

Awesome Conditions near the top

I made the final push up to the summit block, and was just about a hundred vertical feet from the top around 8:50AM. About 2100 vertical feet of climbing down, and half of which breaking trail, in less than 2 hours. I was pretty stoked with my work. This pace doesn’t come naturally for me, apparently several years of running on my lunch break are starting to work. The final ridge leading to the peak

The summit of Rubicon peak is a big steep rock face that probably ranges between class 3 and 5 depending on where you climb it from. I dropped my skis at the edge of the snow and circled around to the west side of the peak. From here I found a route up the rocks that was barely doable in ski boots. I managed to make it to the top, although I didn’t fully stand on it. I kind of just poked my head over and touched it with my hands. Maybe that counts, maybe it doesn’t. I’m sure I’ll be back at some point anyways so I’m not too worried either way. I made my way back down to my skis and saw a lady and her poodle had made their way up as well. We chatted for a few minutes as I got my splitboard ready. The view to the east from the summit Looking southeast Looking southwest into Desolation

I dropped in and more or less tried to follow my tracks from the way up as I was still not super familiar with the terrain. The snow was somewhat variable, but mostly really good. There were some really fun big open sections with great soft snow and an even better view of Tahoe. I stopped once or twice to let my legs recover, but it was a pretty quick return trip. I saw a few groups down on the big bench that leads to the steeper section, and we exchanged some waves and mutual stoke as I passed by. The final section down to the car was a bit icy, but wasn’t too bad. I made it back to the truck somewhere around 9:30. The parking area was completely filled up, I was glad I had turned my truck around so the exit was easy.

I drove back to highway 50, and stopped off at Sierra at Tahoe for a few hours of resort riding. I had just snagged their deal for a pass for the remainder of spring, plus the rest of next year for 400 bucks, not bad. This was my first time at a resort in probably 5 years. Sierra has always been my favorite resort in Tahoe. It’s definitely changed post Caldor fire but the vibe is still the same, and I still knew my way around. All in all, a fantastic day of snowboarding and enjoying the mountains.

Pyramid Peak in the distance from the Nob Hill Chair at Sierra