Haven't you Hurd? Finally back to the Eastern Sierra for some backcountry skiing after a 2 year hiatus. For Day 1 we picked a modest objective as our shake-out day: Hurd Peak in the South Lake area of the Bishop zone. A short approach, reasonable day 1 elevation of 12,237ft, and an aesthetic face + summit scramble led us here. We found the road to be completely plowed & clear all the way to South Lake but for some reason only open to Parchers. A few ski tourers in the parking lot heading to various other far-flung objectives gave us the Shaka as we started up, which hugely motivated Adrian. The altitude shook us out a little, one of my pole baskets ripped off, but other than that a successful climb in perfect weather. At the top Adrian scrambled up a rock flake to gain the tippy top of the highest summit rock; I backed off ("You're in ski boots, are you insane?!") but I'm still countin' this puppy.

Before heading down we waited 20 min for the snow to soften but surprisingly the top 1000 vert stayed firm and chattery well after 1pm. Luckily a ripened corn bomb hit us on the lower slopes and deposited us all the way back at the lake. We also scored some bonus skiing through the trees along the road that brought us back nearly to the car, where by now a mini-crowd of other skiers had trickled in for beers / hard liquor.

We popped into Bishop Creek Lodge for some food but mistimed it and left with Sun Chips -- their kitchen opens at 4:30 if you want to plan your trip around that. It was a bigger day than we had planned, but our thoughts quickly turned to Day 2 -- we needed to go bigger.