Day 2 of an Eastern Sierra trip. With dozens of amazing options in “The Book”, we spent over an hour settling in on an objective the night before. But when we woke up, within 5 min we pulled an audible — after over 10 years of thinking about it, worrying about snow conditions, etc., we FINALLY decided to go for the classic Pinner Couloir. This aesthetic chute twists and turns its way for 3500 ft down Laurel Mountain, its mysteries tucked out of sight from easily accessible vantage points. With zero recent beta we just had to go and check out conditions for ourselves.

As we hiked from Convict Lake and then skinned up the apron to the base of the Pinner, we braced for 4 hours of stairmaster & a grim ski in all-day shade and frozen-in-time avy debris fields. But lo and behold, everything we’d read was wrong and the entire Pinner stayed in the blazing sun during our entire trip. Instead of hours of icy frontpointing, we were placated by a low-consequence booter (albeit a loooong booter). The only thing keeping us on edge was the threat of rockfall as evidenced by the minefield of rocks pocketing the entire length of the couloir.

Topping out of the Pinner, the first thing you see is an even bigger and just completely awesome looking couloir staring you in the face — the North Couloir of Red Slate Mountain. A total classic and coveted by me and my friends for years. It’s almost like it’s strategically placed to drain any ego you may have gained climbing the Pinner by saying “that’s nothing, look at me”. One day…

A short ridge walk later and we reached the Laurel Mountain summit — well done guys. Bluebird 360 views... we glimpsed a group of 3 skiers cresting the Bloody Couloir over on the neighboring Bloody Mountain. And then we were off, skiing right off the summit. Dropping into the Pinner, we couldn’t hear anything except the deafening corn bomb. Walls of corn flew off our skis as we weaved around wet potato slides and through minefields of chocolate chips. A May corn harvest billowed all the way down.

Beers back at Mammoth Brewing Company went down smoothly, quickly in celebration of an amazing day “getting walled” with friends.