Jeremy Wegner and I headed out on Friday with no real plans other than to check out the conditions near Aspen. It’s a long snowmobile ride, but at this time of year it’s nice to check out a new zone when the sledding is so easy. With any luck, Luke Shaffner and his buddy Nate visiting from Montana would join us as well. We decided to kill some time waiting for them with a quick snowmobile lap. North facing conditions remain excellent (Jeremy):

Then we started heading across the valley just in time to catch Luke dropping in on another sled accessed line:

As it turned out, Luke had gotten a work call right before he left the trailhead and had to head home, but Nate was still able to join us. Jeremy and I had decided we wanted to ski Taylor, so that’s where the three of us headed next. I’d been wanting to ski Taylor ever since Pete and I skied Star Peak a couple of years ago, so I was excited to check it out. Taylor:

Another day:

East face of Castle, looking good:

East face of Cathedral, really want to ski this one:

Lots of fun lines on Conundrum, and I’m not even talking about conundrum couloir:

Jeremy closing in on the summit:

The face looked good, minus the dust, of course:

Jeremy:

All in all, a great day, filled with new lines and a list of lines we’d like to go back to. Until next time…

Every year, Pete tries to ski something big on his birthday. Last year, it was White and Whiterock. This year, a few ideas got thrown around, but I tossed out the West Face of Mt. Owen, which I had been looking at most of the day before on “Mountain X”. Jasper agreed, and the three of us headed into unknown territory, a rarity for us and our combined 45 years of backcountry experience in the Crested Butte area. What we found was some of the best couloir skiing anywhere around.

After parking the snowmobiles, we ascended the standard 1,500′ route from Green Lake, but not without a little excitement. Pete described seeing a small mouse-sized hole, wondered if 20′ from the edge of the cornice was enough, and then watched the mouse hole turn into a man sized hole.

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Of the many peaks I hoped to find myself on this season, Precarious Peak ranked right near the top. Deep in the heart of the Elks and often shielded from view in the midst of other high peaks, Precarious had remained a mystery to me in both summer and winter. In January, Brittany took this photo of Precarious from Gothic, and I often caught other glimpses of it, or so I thought.

So often this season I’ve found myself re-tracing familiar steps on familiar peaks, or at best teaming up with someone like Pete who may have already skied whatever day’s objective we were working on. Heading off towards Precarious with Rob yesterday into the relative unknown was something I’ve truly been missing lately. As much as I love not needing a map just about anywhere I ski or bike locally, the lack of adventure is often noticeable.

After driving the recently plowed and re-opened Gothic road to the trailhead, we made our way upvalley and caught our first glimpse of the day’s objective.

As we went higher, we were greeted by a high cirque of peaks and a number of fun looking lines that I’ll have to get back to. We were on the right track:

We finished off the skin and transfered to crampons and iceaxes. As is so often the case, the couloir was less steep than it had appeared from afar, not to mention shorter. Still, the last 25′ on the opposite side of the peak was incredibly steep. This photo of Rob doesn’t do it any justice at all.

Meanwhile, looking north I had to wonder if we were on Precarious or not. It turns out that Precarious was indeed across the valley and we had no idea what peak we were on, although it was the peak we had been shooting for. The real Precarious:

The bells:

In the distance L-R are Siberia, Snowmass, Capitol and Daly. Bellview Mountain in front.

I do not know the name of this peak. I do know that I like it. A lot.

We dropped off the north side, then East to get to our S facing couloir. Rob:

Looking down the couloir:

Parts of the couloir had slid, but it was still super high on aesthetics and we were still stoked. Rob:

Meanwhile, since the temps were staying cool we decided that instead of skiing back the same way we came we should continue on towards another summit. From Mount Crested Butte, these twin summits are always visible:

It didn’t look like it would take too much effort to climb up the backside and drop right down the face and into Copper Creek. Being such visible peaks from our homes, Rob and I were psyched at the way things were working out this day. After about 1,000′ of skinning we dropped off the first summit and then cruised up the other, just because. Rob:

A project to be solved another season:

One last view of the peak we skied, which I have now identified as Unnamed 13,260′, or the 433rd highest peak in CO

There were some high clouds, but the skiing was still near perfect corn, despite the best attempts of the stupid dust layer to screw it all up.

This was one rotten and nasty looking face:

Frank:

The unnamed twin peaks we had just skied top out at 13,043′, while the valley floor is just under 10k. Snow or no snow, Rob made sure he could claim a 3,000′ descent

At this point, our 11 hour day consisted of just a couple of things, one of which was checking out some pretty sizeable avalanche debris:

…And the other being a crossing of Copper creek:

All in all, this was one of the most satisfying days of the year for me. Hopefully I can get back into the zone this week before the dust marches up to the tops of the peaks.

Mt. Owen 13,058′
3.14.09
Eric, Tom, Austin, Rob, Frank

I had been holding off on this TR in the hopes that my friend Rob would be able to get his videos up on youtube, but he had some trouble getting it from his computer to the internet. Photos will have to suffice for what was one of the best days of the year. Mid March was dry and warm in Colorado, which led to some great stable skiing in the backcountry and hard conditions at the ski area. The only worry at that time was that cornices were getting heavy and breaking off, as this one was trying to do on our climb of Owen:

The climb of Owen is steep, but more fun than scary overall. Rob:

Tom and Eric decided to drop in off of a small knob above the Jenga chute below the summit. These lines are some of Owen’s finest. Tom surveying the scene:

Rob, Austin, and I continued to the top and missed Tom and Eric’s runs. Tom took this shot of Eric that also shows Tom’s tracks down the face.

I got to the top first and took this shot of Austin and Rob making their way from the false sumit to the real one:

I guided Rob to the one spot on the ridge not guarded by a cornice, where he dropped in and had one of the best runs of the year:

He was cranking turns down in the basin about .6298 seconds later:

I went next and handed my camera to Austin so he could get a couple of photos of me on a super fun spine.

Tom got a photo from below as well. Rob’s tracks to the left. Look right of the pinnacle for me.

Austin was next and killed a line just looker’s right of mine on his snowboard. Tom’s photos:

The skiing was so good that Tom, Rob and myself all decided to do a 2nd lap. It’s only a little thirteener, right?

The light had left the face on our second lap, so the photos aren’t quite as good, but here is Rob checking out round 2:

…And skiing it in the shade:

Even now, over a month later, those turns on Owen represent one of the highpoints of this ski season. Hopefully there’s a couple more out there.

White Mountain 13,401′
Whiterock Mountain 13,540′

17 miles
7,000′ of vert

Frank, Pete, Jasper, anonymous front range skier who was feeling too “sick” to work

Pete has been working hard lately during spring break, but as luck would have it his one day off this week was on his birthday. He decided he wanted to do a big tour that would collect 2 thirteeners and 2 great ski descents in a long, long day. We began our day at about 6:45 from the Snodgrass/Gothic trailhead and would not return for another 11 hours.

The previous few days I have been skiing Axtel a lot, and hope to get a TR up from there just as soon as dRob gets the time to get his photos and videos up. Despite the lack of recent snowfall, Axtel has been holding super high quality powder.

Today we were entering mountain goat terrain, and saw a large herd of them flying along the ridges. Here are their tracks, with the West face of Teocalli behind:

Higher up, we found their outhouse. I had no idea that goats like to poop in the same place all the time. Weird.

Pete and Jasper checking out Teocalli again. No, they didn’t pose like this on purpose, but I still had to take the photo :

OUr route up was long and gradual, following Perry Creek right under Western State Peak which Brittany and I skied back in January. Our trailhead is way down by the ski area.

The views of the Elks from both of these peaks were some of the best I’ve ever seen. Thunder Pyramid and Pyramid:

Capitol, the Bells, and Pyramid:

We also had a good look at our next objective, Whiterock mountain. We would ski the left skyline off of this peak:

The route that we were here to ski on White is approximately this one (taken from WS peak)

Later in the day, I took another shot of our route, which basically followed the skyline.

The birthday boy got first tracks on near-perfect corn on this big East face:

Two of Jasper:

Finding the exit was obviously key, and the one we found required a little bit of air. I went ahead and guinea-pigged it, which I guess means I already feel comfortable on my second day of dynafiddling. Pete had the best form off of this air, so he gets the photo. The “sick” maggot was standing right there, but I erased him in PS. Weird to just deny someone’s existence like that…

Pete again:

We started climbing back towards Whiterock and got good views of the ridge connecting these two summits. There are a number of pinnacles and cliffs comprised of very rotten rock, so I doubt if it has ever been traversed on the ridge crest.

Just under the summit of Whiterock, things got a bit interesting. Jasper checked things out:

…and decided we should make a descending traverse around the rotten pinnacles:

…and then back up again through damp sugar snow that hasn’t quite reached full springtime maturity.

We were again confronted with amazing views. Brittany and I skied this face last year in June, since the couloir on the right (El Nacho) had slid out:

The Maroon Bells were unbelievably impressive from our vantage point:

As was Pyramid:

The North facing shots were super tempting, but they would have added many miles to our tour and would have offered up about half as much fall line skiing versus the W side.

West side it was (Jasper):

Pete:

We even found powder as the route turned slightly more N facing near the bottom of this 3,000′ run:

From Copper creek we could see a large portion of the run:

From here it was just a long slog through the town of Gothic back to our cars:

Made me wish that I had a March birthday, too. Great day.

Brittany and I decided to head up Schofield pass Sunday morning for a little skiing and exploring. We knew we could ski Halloween bowl again, but were open to some other choices as well. Not far after I parked, we saw this stuck Tacoma which confirmed that I parked mine in a good place:

At the top of the pass, we saw a skintrack heading up the popular 401 bike trail, and decided to follow that to the summit of Mt. Bellview. While we knew this would lead to a South facing slope which wouldn’t yield good skiing, we were in a mood to explore and headed up 401:

Brittany nears the summit with Baldy in the background.

Frank on the summit with Snowmass in the background

Brittany on the summit with Crested butte in the background:

The day before, a small storm deposited lots of rime ice on the vegetation not yet covered with snow:

Precarious Peak to the NW:

Maroon Bells, Bellview Mountain, and Pyramid:

The mountains to the west (westernmost peaks of the Elks). I think they include Daly (not the one next to Capitol), Meadow Mountain, and Mt Richey. Anyone know for sure?

The top of the run was pretty smooth wind affected snow, and actually skied quite nicely. Brittany:

Frank:

Lower down, the snow got thinner and more sun affected. while we still hit very few rocks, we were forced to make “gorilla turns” and get well away from the sun crust while turning:

In the end, we had fun despite the pretty poor snow conditions. We’ve gotten a little snow since then, but we sure could use a couple of feet to really get this season going again.