Quandary Peak 14,265’
Partners: Andy Dimmen, Scott Yost, Scott McDaniel
April 7, 2007
After a couple of days of tax fun it was time to head back to the mountains. Even though the weather on Saturday looked pretty marginal, I thought that Quandary might not be a bad idea. After all, it gets so much traffic there’s pretty much a highway to the top, and there’s barely any avalanche danger on the standard route, so it was at least worth a shot. I recruited my friend Scott McDaniel from Boulder, who is headed to the Bolivian Andes in June. I knew he needed to get out, because he has been far too busy starting a new business and hasn’t had nearly enough time getting strong for Bolivia. Scott Yost(who joined me on the Needle and Uncompahgre) is going with Scott M to Bolivia, so he said he would make the drive from Crested Butte to meet us. Andy was looking to ski Quandary as well, so I contacted him and he met up with us as well.
Skinning up the ridge
We chose to go down the Cristo couloir on the south side. There was a short section of rock that we traversed across near the top of the couloir, but otherwise it was filled in nicely. The snow, however, was as bad as it can be. A 2” crust on top of powder on top of ice. Nice.
Looking down:
Scott M making the snow look pretty decent while dropping the knee.
Andy making things look a lot better than they were.
