Trip Stats
Trip Report
Ever since I first went back to Silver Peak, I have wanted to ski the Zipper Chute. Tim and I finally decided to do it on a fine spring day. Driving up the road we encountered snow a little ways past the bridge, and started our skinning there. We quickly skinned up the road and at the trailhead to Twin Lakes we entered the forest. We proceeded through the forest above the snow-covered hiking trail and at one point tried to drop down to where we thought the hiking trail was, ending up down at the river. We had to boot back up 50 feet, and then followed the slope until we hit the lake, where we were afforded decent views of the chute. It looked like a good ski, but it was hard to tell if the entrance was doable on skis.
We picked our way through various steams intending on following the hiking trail along the main stream. But it looked dicey with the snow melt, so we skinned up an open snowfield. The skin up was fine, with a couple of steep sections to navigate. We eventually found our way onto the ridge looker’s right of the chute and took a nice break in the sun and admired Tinkham Peak. We had to venture on the backside of the mountain and then skinned up to the entrance of the Zipper Chute. Conditions looked good – the sun had warmed up the snow in the chute and the entrance was fine. We descended the chute, dodging the numerous chunks of rock littering the snow. Towards the bottom of the chute we headed right and came into chunky snow deposited by an old slide. Continuing down, we skied right to the hiking trail log crossing next to the lake.
