Italian Subs (Umm, Yummy) 4.16.11
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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:
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:
We made short work of our bootpack and dropped into this short and sweet line. Josh:
Brett:
Josh:
Pete:
Very short, but probably worth the trip:
We still had plenty of daylight to work with, so we headed over to another sub-peak of Italian which I had skied with Jeremy Wegner a few years ago. Jeremy called this Italian Nipple:
We had a nice view of the East face of Castle:
Super fun and aesthetic climb:
Pete drops in:
A rare photo of me. Photo by Josh Macak:
Best. Snowmobile. Ride. Ever.
As we skied Italian Sub #2, we watched the clouds rolling in from the West. We’ve been getting snow ever since, which is great, but it’s also hampering our ability to get out in the alpine. At least the powder skiing has been great.
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