Category: Crested Butte Area

April 2011 Powder Sessions

Posted by Frank – April 24, 2011

Ahh, April. In my mind, it’s the best month of the year, by far. And while I’ve skied plenty of powder in April, I usually think of the bigger alpine lines when I think of April. That generally hasn’t been the case this April. The only trip to 14,000′ this year?- Powder on Mount Democrat. The Irwin cat skiing operation, located just West of Crested Butte, stopped recording their year-to-date snowfall last week at roughly 730″. I’m sure that number is now well over 750″, and it’s snowing heavily outside right now in the midst of a winter storm warning. This is great and all, but I have to admit that I’m ready for some time in the Alpine. It looks like I may get my wish in just a few days. In the meantime, I have to admit that some of the runs I’ve taken in the last week rank at or near the top for the entire season.

Josh Macak on The Quill:
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Tom Runcie drops into Axtell’s 2nd bowl:
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Sydney Fuller:
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Jack Weiss:
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Will Dujardin:
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A quick video from the Quill and the Playground. I wish the GoPro batteries hadn’t died on my run in the playground, as it may very well have been my favorite run of the year. Vimeo did weird things to this video, but since youtube kills the audio, I’m going back to the vimeo version.

Untitled from 14erskiers on Vimeo.

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Italian Subs (Umm, Yummy) 4.16.11

Posted by Frank – April 20, 2011

Italian Mountain is a large massif at the head of both Cement Creek and the Taylor River. Last year, while skiing Taylor Peak, I spotted a number of lines off of Cement’s unnamed sub-peaks. My friends Ben and Luke recently skied one of these lines, so armed with that beta Pete, Josh, Brett and I went up to check it out. The line:
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This area of the Elks borders the Sawatch range, and is correspondingly dryer and windier than what we’re used to in the snow-favored areas closer to Crested Butte. Shallower snowpacks tend to slide more, and we observed a number of large slides on generally East-facing terrain on peaks like Hunter Hill, Doubletop, and Italian. The slides didn’t look too recent and we were skiing different aspects, but it was still something to take note of. As always, future lines popped up everywhere. Pete and I have been eying this one for years:
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Teocalli North Face and West Face Combo 4.15.11

Posted by Frank – April 19, 2011

The North face of Teocalli has been on my list for quite some time, ever since Pete Sowar and I traversed under it when we skied the NE and W faces in 2008. Last Friday, things finally worked out to give it a go, along with Brittany, Pete, and Josh Macak. The USGS library has this great photo of Teocalli Mountain from 1973, taken by noone other than the famous William H Jackson. The notes on this photo are interesting: Teocalli Peak, from the Aztec teocalli, or sacrificial mound, that were always built in a pyramidal form, and which this mountain closely resembles. Is situated upon a small tributary of Red Rock Creek, flowing into East River. Its height is 13,274 feet. Gunnison County, Colorado. 1873.

Red Rock Creek is now known as Brush Creek, although I think I like Red Rock Creek better. Today, the official height is a little lower as well, at 13,209′. In any case, we quickly made our way up the south slopes and took a quick break at the start of the rock outcrops.
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Nearing the summit:
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One option we had in mind is the beautiful splitter couloir that drops off just before the summit:
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NE Face White/ S Face Whiterock/ S Face Red Rock Bowl (No Name) 4.5.11

Posted by Frank – April 8, 2011

North of Crested Butte lies the Whiterock massif, a collection of peaks in the mid-13,000′ range. Pete, Jasper, Josh, Howard and I hoped to link several faces together in a big day- the first climb alone, of 13,401′ White Benchmark, is over 4,000′ from the Snodgrass trailhead. We had traveled much of this ground before, linking up White and Whiterock back in 2009. In addition to these two peaks, we were also hoping to ski the Spider Face, a line which has been eluding me for years. Looks like it will have to wait a little longer…

We started off in the dark, skiing down to the East River via headlamp. As much as I hate the alarm clock going off well before dawn, once I’m up it’s hard not to admire the beauty of the early morning hours.
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Whetstone:
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Crested Butte Springtime Powder Skiing

Posted by Frank – April 7, 2011

Ahh, March and April, my favorite time of year. Generally stable enough to ski most of the steeper alpine lines, yet the snow is still powder on the north faces. It just doesn’t get any better in Colorado.

March 18, Anthracites.

Dave Bourassa, visiting from the front range and enjoying his teal birthday suit:
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Mel Walker:
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Crested Butte Ski Mountaineering Camps With CBMG

Posted by Frank – March 31, 2011

Sometimes people ask “How did you learn how to do this stuff?” In my case, I learned to ski at a young age, and started picking up some climbing skills in high school. I wouldn’t say that I ever got very good at climbing, but at least I learned the basics. Skiing at the resorts eventually led to a desire to ski in the backcountry, so I started to learn how to skin, and navigate the mountains, and of course I took an avalanche course. That worked for me, although I certainly haven’t stopped learning.

If I wanted to get into ski mountaineering today, starting from scratch, I think I would want to get a solid foundation via a course. Our friends at Crested Butte Mountain Guides are offering two such courses, on April 7-10 as well as April 22-25. There are still a few spaces available.

The camps are designed to cover basic ski mountaineering skills: crampon, ice axe, basic rope work, navigation, and pertinent avy conditions. Last year’s camps they skied:
1) Redwell – via a technical rappel entrance off Scarp cliffs. (to teach rope/anchor skills)

2) Gothic Spoon

3) Carbon Spoon

4) Wolverine/Coon/Climax Chutes link up

Other options include White and Whiterock:

…Or Axtell. Or some of the peaks in the Ruby Range. Generally, this includes many of the peaks shown here on 14erskiers. Speaking of 14ers, CBMG also has permits to guide the following 14ers: Crestone Area 14ers; Sawatch/Collegiate Range, Gray’s & Torrey’s; Evans; Pike’s Peak.

Cost for the Crested Butte Ski Mountaineering Camps is $525/person for 4 days including all technical gear (crampons, harness, axe, rope), and good lodging deals at Elk Mtn & Purple Mtn Lodges ($70/night or so). I think that’s a pretty good deal, all things considered, and the guides at CBMG are top notch. Check it out, and if you do call CBMG, please let them know you heard about their camps for 14erskiers.com.

Looking forward to spring ski mountaineering season myself…

Purple Peak “S” Couloir and Some Bonus Hucking 3.16.11

Posted by Frank – March 21, 2011

I decided to take a short break from my Pemberton, BC trip reports and do something a little more recent from little ‘ol Colorado. It’s prime time right now, with a lot of the area’s best lines proudly signed off with ski tracks right now. Hopefully we get a nice re-fill tonight…

Tom Runcie, Rob Dickinson and I headed up towards Purple Peak and we were able to get nice and close with the snowmobiles, followed by a short bootpack.

Photo Tom Runcie:

Tom got the first drop:
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Rob dropped in next but he went so fast all the photos were blurry. Or else the photographer just needs some work. The chute had just a touch of windcrust in it, but otherwise it was in great shape. Our tracks and part of the line, as seen from below:
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Mount Owen continues to look caked, though the cornices guarding it are getting a bit excessive. I went back to this area on 3-19-11, and some of the cornices had indeed failed and there was some debris in the runouts of these lines, so we went elsewhere. Rob likes:
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Since Purple went so quickly, we decided to do some mini laps with the sleds in a nearby zone. Frank:

Photo Tom Runcie:

Rob:
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Then Rob and Tom decided to start hucking. Tom:
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Tom, starting to realize that despite his best efforts, he’s about to land in Rob’s bombhole:
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Ouch.
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Then Rob decided to go for the slightly higher take-off. And he pointed it a little higher. And there was a bit of a windlip that acted like a kicker. And the result was one of the bigger airs I’ve seen in a while.
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Doesn’t look that big, eh? Try Tom’s view:

Photos Tom Runcie:

He’s just now landing…

All in all, a good day back in Colorado.

Buckhorn Couloir 1.26.11

Posted by Frank – January 31, 2011

Crested Butte (the mountain) has a wide range of great skiing opportunities besides the terrific in-bounds terrain. Unfortunately, the area outside the boundaries is also steep, complicated, and avalanche-prone terrain, and much of it ends up on private property, so Crested Butte has always had a closed boundary policy. I’d like to think that someday that might change, and skiers could ski down lines like the Terminator chutes with ropes and gear, but that’s probably too progressive of an outlook- after all, this isn’t Europe is it? In any case, the terrain is still accessible from outside the boundaries, so Pete Sowar, John Jasper and I headed out to ski the South facing “Buckhorn Couloir” last week amidst improving avalanche conditions and sunny skies.

Fog covered the lower valley, which stayed cold in an inversion while we basked in the sun up high.
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We topped out near the summit of the mountain, where several skiers were taking advantage of the conditions by ascending the peak, an in-bounds run here in Crested Butte.
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After a quick snack, we headed through the forest towards the couloir, a line each of us had skied at least once. Pete:
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John:
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The entrance to the couloir is tight and intricate, and sometimes the best route doesn’t follow the couloir exactly down the center. JJ dropping in:
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Pillow Palace 1.27.11

Posted by Frank – January 28, 2011

After last Saturday’s storm, we received quite a bit of wind here in the Crested Butte area, making for some tricky avalanche conditions which are starting to improve with our sunny weather, and of course finding the right aspects to ski has been a challenge as well. The heavily treed Pillow Palace seemed like a good sheltered choice, and we actually found some good skiing up higher as well. The Pillow Palace is an interesting ski, as you constantly traverse one way or the other looking for fun pillows to play on, skiing short pitches along the way. I know some people are over the POV thing, but it’s really the best way to document this kind of treed terrain. The few photos I did get are in a slideshow at the start of the POV. Hope you like it!

Pillow Palace 1-27-11 from 14erskiers on Vimeo.

Axtel 1.12 and 1.14.11

Posted by Frank – January 25, 2011

Between our trip to Jackson and too much time spent skiing pow at the area, this TR is a little late, but still worthwhile. Axtel is probably my favorite mountain locally, with so many options including steep tree skiing that we can actually do in the winter in powder here in Colorado. 1st and 2nd bowls are tough to get good pictures of, so the POV is probably a better representation of the skiing we do there. It was deep (find Tom’s helmet):
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Zach:
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Adrian:
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Zach:
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Tom:
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Zach:
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Tom:
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And my pillowy, sloughy POV (note to self: treat the sloughs with more respect up in Canada in a couple of weeks):

Axtel 1-14-11 from 14erskiers on Vimeo.