TR: King Solomon Mountain, Silverton (5 May 2012)
(Last Updated On: May 10, 2012)
Some of the best skiing always seems to happen in May. Exactly one year ago to the day, we skied Pyramid. A year before that, on May 9th, we skied Capitol. It seemed appropriate that we would ski some of the better lines during this first weekend of May, despite the fact that this ski season has been limping along with sub-par snow. The San Juans are of their own, holding snow when you expect that they shouldn’t. We hooked up with our friend Jarrett, a former Buttian who has spent the last two years in Silverton. We knew we would not be disappointed.
King Solomon was the goal. To make our lives easier, we set up a shuttle between Little Giant and Cunningham basins and began following the road up toward our goal. The light is always beautiful in the morning.
The road walk was largely dry, with patches of snow.
The snow was still holding well up high!
There were mining ruins everywhere.
We found ourselves ascending a southwest-facing grassy slope out of the Little Giant basin to reach the summit of King Solomon.
And though we thought we were on a pretty cool line, we were reminded of larger, tougher peaks to our south- the Needles.
Me, checking out the entrance to our line.
As we checked out the snow, we realized that our north-facing line was still rather frozen. So, we waited. And waited some more. We spent over an hour at the summit, waiting for the line to soften.
Jarrett dropped in first.
As it turns out, the snow was pretty good 🙂
Frank.
Me.
After skiing the steep upper part of the line, we still had a ways to go. We continued following the drainage downward.
The snow kept getting thinner and thinner.
Some parts were like this.
And there was some of this.
But, there were only a couple of willow bashing episodes and then the rest of the gully was free and clear.
Of course it ended with a nice cold stream crossing.
But all and all, it was a fantastic day.
A look bad at the day’s line.
Thanks Jarrett for showing us the goods- some of the best skiing we’ve had all season!
Brittany Walker Konsella
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any chance of getting these photos re-upped?
Photos show fine on my end, Dave. These were in the days when we were using photobucket for our photos- perhaps wherever you were trying to view them has photobucket blocked?
That was such a fun day!