On December 12-13, 1981 Jim White and I did a six mile round trip ski tour in the Green Lakes area of the Hoover Wilderness. We left Independence about 6 p.m. Friday evening and drove to the Green Lakes road near Bridgeport. We drove up the road almost to the Green Lakes campground.
There was some light snow on the road in the meadow below the campground and a fallen tree across the road just below the campground at the first house. We parked at the junction of a side road that goes to a mine (I think).
Saturday we got up to a cold and breezy morning, had breakfast and hit the trail about 9:30. We skied up the road and then onto the trail. There were bare spots on the trail and rocks showing in some places so we alternated skiing and walking.
When the switch backs started we mostly used the skis in mostly deep snow but had some problems with the rocks. We finally got up onto the flatter area and the going was good. We were getting tired and it was starting to snow so we made camp about 3 p.m. about a quarter mile below Green Lake on wet saturated snow that was icy underneath. The temperature was relatively warm which made things wet. During the night it snowed about six inches and was pretty windy. We were protected by trees and were in my new Omnipotent SL tent.
Sunday morning the weather was fairly nice with some sun and we did some skiing on a nearby slope. This was sort of a checkout trip for our planned four day pre-Christmas trip and it worked out well. We headed back to the car about 1 p.m. and with a few problems on the trail due to lack of adequate snow plus rocks made it back to the car about 3 p.m. It didn't appear to have snowed significantly at the car - may have rained. We headed for home, made a side trip on the cutoff road to Virginia Lakes and were stopped by snow on the road. We headed home after a great weekend - my first ski tour with pack.
Green Lake area ski tour 1981
