Chicago Basin Part 2- Mt Eolus 14,083′ 5-10-08
After our hike up the day before, we set the alarm to 4:30am to ski our first peak of the trip. We were worried about the weather forecast, and sure enough it was dumping at 4:30. So we woke up again at 6:30 and it wasn’t snowing as hard, but it was still very windy. So we went back to sleep one more time and got up at 9:30, even though the wind was still howling. We set off at 11am, figuring we could at least make a trail for the following day if the winds were still too bad.
Eolus was named after the greek god of wind, so it was only fitting to see it like this:
Still, the higher we got, the more we thought we might just get to summit Eolus, as the winds weren’t too bad. The next thing we knew, we were in the couloir, protected from the wind. Brittany:
Above the couloir, we had some rock scrambling to do here and there to reach the summit.
After a while on the summit, we dropped down the southwest side to access the top of the east couloir. Brittany:
me:
The couloir was short but oh so sweet- some of the best snow I’ve skied on a fourteener. Powder in May in a steep aesthetic couloir- can’t beat that! Here I am, dropping in:
Jordan:
Jarrett:
After the couloir, we had lots of lower angled skiing ahead of us. Brittany rips up the bowl, with the couloir behind:
Brittany again, heading towards Mt. Kennedy:
Jordan gets deep into some willow bushes on the lower gully:
We felt lucky to have skied Eolus given the weather, and got back to camp around 5pm. Here’s a photo of Eolus and the line we skied:
