It’s been a long time since I posted anything, mostly because I haven’t been in the mountains much the past month or so. Since the skiing wasn’t very good in December, I took a small job in Denver, and followed that up with family Christmas visits. Surely the skiing would be better by the time I got back around New Year’s, I thought. Sadly, the skiing went from bad to worse as December wore on. Crested Butte, like much of the West from Utah to California, is in the midst of an extremely dry winter. Certainly the worst I’ve seen here since my arrival in 1996. Don’t be surprised when I do a bike trip report- sadly the biking is excellent right now.

In any case, Brittany and I will keep trying our best to keep the faith and have fun with what little snow we have. So rather than party hard on New Year’s eve, we stayed in and were joined by our friends Ben and Jonathan on a tour up Richmond. In addition to the lack of snow, we’ve also had a steady diet of strong winds, so rather than attempt to seek out powder, we were actually hoping for smooth wind buffed snow. We found some, as well as punchy crusts and scree-covered snow. The conditions weren’t all that surprising, but what may have been surprising was how much fun we still had despite it all. On with some photos…

Skinning:

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From Mouse House Ridge, Zach and I spotted an aesthetic line on 12,632′ Crystal Peak, just a little to our West. We made plans to check out the area on the following day, and it turned out to be a great tour, my favorite thus far in ’11-’12. From the summit, we had some of the most impressive views of any Elk range peak I’ve been on, and I’ve been on a few.

Heading towards the saddle between Treasury and Crystal:

Climbing Crystal from the saddle was a lot of fun despite some wind and even had a nice short scrambling section:

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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:

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:

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:

Since Purple went so quickly, we decided to do some mini laps with the sleds in a nearby zone. Frank:

Photo Tom Runcie:

Rob:

Then Rob and Tom decided to start hucking. Tom:

Tom, starting to realize that despite his best efforts, he’s about to land in Rob’s bombhole:

Ouch.

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.

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.

After a quick lap in the Anthracites the day before, I knew 2 things: the skiing is really, really good for October, and I wanted to get higher. So, Pete Sowar, John Jasper and I headed out towards Paradise Divide with a number of possibilities grabbing our attention. We wanted to go deep, real deep, towards North Pole Basin or even Bear Basin off Treasure Mountain, but we got off to a late start and didn’t even make it to Elkton, so we re-evaluated our plans and made a beeline towards Baldy.

Our mountains have quickly turned from a fall playground into a winter one, with Crested Butte’s “pow cam” getting literally buried. This shot was only halfway through the storm:

The higher peaks to the West and North were even more buried. To say we’re off to a good start is, at this point, an understatement. Let’s hope it keeps up and we’re left with a nice stable base for the rest of the season. As we skinned up the South side of baldy, I came to the unfortunate realization that my camera batteries were dead. I had just replaced them, but the rechargeable AA batteries must have never been recharged. It was a bummer, but the skiing was still superb. After our second lap of the day, I was scrounging around my pack looking for sunscreen, (which I did not find, and my face is burnt, so don’t forget your sunscreen as we begin the ski season) when I found some other batteries. While they died last spring, they had regained just enough juice to take a few photos.

WSC bowl is named because it is very popular with students from Western State College at this time of year. A few years back I even saw a college student with a full-length garden shovel sticking out of his pack. At least he had something, I guess. In any case, here’s our tracks. The skiing was probably as good as it gets in October, with a supportable base and no rocks at all.

The second lap took us down “Skinny Cinny”, a couloir that drops off the summit of Cinnamon to the South. The first time I skied this line was way back in October 1996, a year that also started off really strong. We walked all the way from Pittsburg in the Slate River valley that time, and skied it with our 205 skinny skis. I can’t think of much that I miss from those days. “Skinny Cinny” isn’t all that skinny right now (our tracks are hard to find, but they’re in there):

All that was left after our second lap was another trip up and over Baldy.

Looking North towards Siberia, Capitol, Snowmass, and Hagerman:

Taking a break and looking towards Crested Butte:

Even at the end of a hot, sunny day, the South side of Baldy was still skiing very well. That said, I’m not sure how many sunny days the South faces can handle.

Conditions are unbelievably good right now. This is a great start to our base, but of course the fear is that all this snow now will simply be a rotten avalanche causing mess later on this season. Right now it looks like we’re heading into warmer and dryer temperatures, so we can only hope for the best. At least the skiing will be good in the short term.

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During our ski descent of the S-Tube the day before, Brittany and I admired the NE face of Hancock and made plans to ski it the following day. After all, we could utilize our existing skintrack for the first climb of the day, plus the snow was exceptional on the S-Tube and it looked just as good over on Hancock. We parked the sleds bright and early and were dismayed to find that our skintrack was blown over and wouldn’t help very much. Worse still, the snow now had a zipper crust in a lot of places and was really bad in others. Wind seems to be a constant theme this March in the Elks.

Checking things out seemed like a better option than turning tail and heading home, so we gained the ridge and dropped down the crusty SW slopes to enter Democrat Basin. Winter or summer, Democrat Basin is an amazing place and well worth a visit even for the most jaded outdoor traveler. The wind was still pluming off one of Richmond’s summits:

We began our second ascent of the day, this time heading towards Oh-Be-Joyful pass, right under the school bus sized cornices precariously hanging off of Richmond’s South ridge. It’s a good place to move as quickly as possible.

This face continues to climb the ranks of my “most wanted” list.

Brittany and I persevered through the high winds above Oh-Be-Joyful pass and reached the summit to gear up. The top 10′ was fun:

The massive face looked like it had escaped the full brunt of the winds and we were stoked to drop in.

It was good. Frank:

Brittany:

Great terrain, good snow, bluebird. Does it get any better? Frank:

Brittany:

Frank:

Brittany:

We were worried about our climb back out of Democrat Basin and if it would be too hot on this sunny face, but the windy conditions were now doing us a favor and keeping the snow relatively dry and cool. We spent our time admiring our “John Hancock’s” on this beautiful face:

I’d like to bang a skier’s right another day to ski the steeper terrain of the East face, but the snow was a lot better on the face we skied. The cream of the Ruby range in all their glory:

You know it’s a good day when the bonus turns are in the S-Tube. We chose to ski the rib just left of the actual tube and exit the adjoining chute. Frank:

Brittany, barely visible in the center of the photo in the sunlit patch:

…and exiting out the bottom:

Looks like we’re in for some snowy weather, hopefully without too much wind and we can get back at it soon.