Splitboarding the Incredible Hulk and Kettle Peak in the Eastern Sierra

The conditions finally allowed us to get our splitboards out into some more serious terrain this crazy 2023 snow season! We ventured out into the Eastern Sierras outside of Bridgeport, CA to do the couloirs off of the Incredible Hulk and Kettle Peak. We got rejected by the Kettle Peak couloir twice on this day due to unstable snow, but we will just have to come back for it! The top of the Incredible Hulk couloir was stable pow and turned into some textured corn, but was still really enjoyable! The day rounded out to be about 5,000 vertical feet of elevation gain and around 10 miles. Such a solid crew out there in the mountains all on Jones Snowboards and the token skier John with a solid push to make it up there in time to do half of the Hulk and half of Kettle!

[@tyleryoungberg4766]

Awesome. Heading down next week to give it a go - what time did you guys start touring?

[@GnarSauce]

We were skinning by 7:20ish. Kettle gets baked pretty quick!

[@UncleT0ny]

have you considered VERTS for the final accent? would that be useful?

[@GnarSauce]

I have seen those and they look very useful when booting up couloirs with bottomless pow. However the line we booted up was mostly firm/consolidated powder making the VERTS not very useful. Great question though! Thanks for checking out the video!

[@eriknodland8352]

I run Karakoram sender plates, work the same as verts but can add from points for carried pow to some crust, but are not a substitute for crampons.

[@GnarSauce]

Nice! Do they connect to your boots or bindings?

[@eriknodland8352]

Binding, so Karakoram interface. But they do work with hardboot setups too (still need the hardboot binding)!

[@GnarSauce]

Ah gotcha. I run sparks, so wouldn’t work on my current set up