Peak 9814 (Kirkwood) - April 2 2025

Mokelumne Wilderness Area, Carson Pass, California
2991m

After last year's trip down to Tahoe at the start of April for the last big powder dump of the year, the highlight of which was skiing Round Top afterwards (at least in the Tahoe leg of the trip), I decided "well that worked out so well, why not do it again"! Right around the same time this year, Whistler had just got rain all the way to the summit, things were looking grim at home, but then Kirkwood was forecast for over a metre of snow in the span of a few days, so I cashed in some PTO at work and set out on Sunday (March 30th) to make my way to the promise land 😄

After a 16-hour drive (thanks to all the Oregon drivers crashing on I-5 for that), I rolled in to South Lake Tahoe at a casual 11:30pm, said hi to the bear who decided to greet me right as I got out of my car at the hotel (shoutout to the Travel Inn, whose owner remembered me from last year!), and got some shut-eye before starting my 3 days of powder skiing! The lines were short, the weather miserable, and the skiing fantastic for the first 2 days, and I skied the most vert I had all season in that time 🙂. However, on the Wednesday, I had to pick up my buddy Eric from the Reno airport in the afternoon, so I decided to be a bit more strategic. I waited for first chair on the backside, since that was closed during the snowfall, hit a couple fresh laps, then decided to sneak this peak in before heading out, since we finally had visibility, and there was a safe route to get there, even after all that snowfall.

I skied down from the top of the lift towards Covered Wagon Peak, which is a small bump which forms the edge of the resort boundary, then slapped my skins on my heavy resort setup, and started trudging up at 11:30. I looked a bit weird gearing up for what most people was just a short bootpack, but I at least made up for it a little by passing people once I started moving. Would've been awkward looking all serious with the gear and getting passed by Jerries with downhill setups 😄

In about 10 minutes, I made it up to the top of Covered Wagon, where the most intrepid of the resort skiers stopped to hit their fresh lines, and I quickly realised that the best option to continue forwards would not be keeping on the now-rocky ridge, but to drop a little to the south side of the ridge, which had fairly open and broad slopes to keep skinning on. Later on in the day, I would see people coming from the north side, who just cut around the Covered Wagon summit a bit earlier, but if you follow the bootpack all the way, this route makes the most sense.

Getting down involved a small amount of backtracking and some side-stepping to protect my skis and avoid having to get out of walk mode (too many sharks to ski, and too short to bother transitioning). Once I was down, though, the route towards Melissa Coray (the peak between Covered Wagon and 9814) was pretty straightforward.

After a little sidehilling (thankfully not that hard on skis, and the slopes were surprisingly stable given the amount of snowfall, with a very chill runout), I just walked a little back from the ridge all the way up to Melissa Coray. There is a trail in the area in the summer, and there were a couple signs as I got closer to the summit which seem to indicate where it goes. The "summit" of Melissa Coray (itself also a minor bump from a prominence perspective) has a small shack and some comms towers on it. I just used it for a pee break and continued on my way to the p100 of Peak 9814 🙂

The "descent", if you can call it that, from Melissa Coray is quite brief, and gentle enough to just straightline with your skins on. I aimed just to the looker's left of the rocky outcroppings that jut out on the ridge, and that allowed for easy travel and efficient skinning, so I'd say that's a good choice. From there, just ascend the gentle slopes until you're on the "north ridge" of the peak, which isn't exactly a daunting scramble, but just a visually distinct point where you change direction 😅(this is not exactly an Alaskan giant).

Once I got to the summit block, I saw this small snow ramp leading to the rocky summit, and decided to leave my skis there, since I didn't plan to ski the hard lines down the summit into the bowl solo. The ramp takes all of 10 steps to get up, then a trivial 5-move scramble brings you to the summit! The views are pretty nice up there, so I took a few minutes to just chill and take them in.

After hanging out for a bit, I started to make my way back towards the resort, as I did have a friend who was soon to be waiting around at the airport for me to pick him up 😅. Since I couldn't safely ski directly off the summit, and the traverse further north looked somewhat involved (though it seems to provide an avy-safe way to get back to the base of the resort in powder, without much skinning), I just decided to keep the skins on my skis, and walk back to the Coray-Wagon col, and ski back inbounds where I knew I could get back onto the chair without having to skin at the bottom, or get sucked into the Emigrant Lake basin, which was steeper than was acceptable by myself.

I walked back over Melissa Coray, and then took my skis off and booted down the peppery NW ridge until I felt like the snow was consistent enough to not wreck my bases, and transitioned. The walk back took about 20 minutes, and I took my time transitioning for another 10. While I was doing so, I saw a party skinning up around the north side of Covered Wagon. Hopefully the rest of my skin track was useful to them, at least.

Once I clicked in, it was easy skiing back down the ridge separating the resort from Emigrant Lake, but at least it was powder! The sun was already starting to crust it up, though, so I was glad I did my major downhill days during the storm, while the snow stayed soft. Once I got back down, I rode the chair up one more time, then cut over to Hell's Delight to get back to the parking without any further lifts, which was actually a fun ski, even with some tracks in it.

I'd definitely recommend this peak as a nice sidecountry adventure in Kirkwood, though I would also bring friends, and ski one of the nicer-looking steep lines off the summit to Emigrant Lake. That looks like the play, but I was happy enough just to get a peak before heading out on the ultra-bagging part of our trip 🙂

GPX Track + Map