One of my favorite fourteener lines, the South Couloir of Maroon Peak needed a trip report of its’ own and a little bit of scanning sealed the deal. So here goes, with the retro TR.
The South Couloir on Maroon is one of the Crested Butte area’s most striking and visible lines from nearly any high peak.
For several years I had been wanting to ski it, but it wasn’t until 2003 that I finally got the chance. Dawson’s book describes the ascent via an approach from Lead King Basin outside Marble, but the approach from Crested Butte over Frigidaire Pass makes just as much sense. The crux of the approach is to time it so that Gothic road is at least partially open, otherwise the approach will be pretty huge, at least 25 miles round trip, all the way from the Snodgrass trailhead in Mount Crested Butte.
I scoped out Gothic Road before we headed out and discovered that the road had been plowed, but was still gated and closed to motor vehicles. So, the plan was to load up the bikes and ride them the 5 or so miles out to Rustler’s Gulch. Jeremy Wegner, Alison Gannett and I headed out the next morning with loaded overnight packs and clumsily rode our bikes out the frozen road. While we could have continued up the road all the way to the turnoff for Rustler’s Gulch, we ditched the bikes right before the road crossed the East river. Had we gone over the bridge and continued up the road, we would have needed to wade across the river, which we obviously didn’t want to do.
Now on our skis, our next goal was to reach the low point between Mount Bellview and Pt 12,445. From the col, we were able to traverse around and reach the highest group of trees below West Maroon Pass, where we made a snowcave for the night.
We got up early the following morning and made our way towards Frigidaire Pass in the dark. We ran into a major problem at the pass, however, which was that we couldn’t see whether or not the ridge was corniced or not. After a lot of wandering around looking for a way through, we finally decided the only way to be sure was to summit Belleview Mountain and ski into Fravert Basin that way. As it turned out the Frigidaire Pass ridge was completely cornice and we made a good choice. This added almost a thousand feet, and we started to get concerned that our timing would be off. On the other hand, we got to ski a great couloir down Bellview into Fravert Basin:
Fravert Basin is one of the most spectacular places I’ve ever been, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. We now had a good view of our objective of the day: (photo taken in the pm)
This face looks a lot less intimidating from up close than it does from the far away peaks of the Crested Butte area. The snow was still solidly frozen and we made excellent time cramponing up the couloir:
It got a little more technical as we finished the climb up the ridge, but it certainly wasn’t the 70degree slope mentioned in Dawson’s book.
Ideally, we would have waited for the snow to soften, but we still needed to ascend Bellview Mountain, pack up camp, and make it over Mount Bellview. Down we went, despite the still frozen conditions:
We reascended Bellview Mountain, and had great turns down its’ south face to our campsite. After packing up, we traversed towards PT 12,445′, where several great couloirs drop down into Rustler’s Gulch. Unfortunately these East facing couloirs were too wet by the time we reached them so we descended some nearby slopes that were a bit less committing. We made it back to the bikes and I was happy to finally get out of my Tecnicas (no AT boots for me back in those days). A few miles of biking down the road brought us back the the car and the stashed cervezas. I wish I could do this tour every year, it’s nearly perfect.
