Couloir Tour '08

*Note: This is a long post.  7 days of skiing.  I thought about cutting it down, but it's my blog and I'll do what I like. :)

Chris started out his graduation celebration Couloir Tour in style.  2 beers in the office, 2 pitchers of Mountain Sun beer with PhD, several beers at home, and a celebratory bottle of single malt scotch from RedCoat.  Needess to say, he was still drunk when he got up at 4am to go ski Citadel with Evan, Mike2, and Paul.  I wisely stayed home, slept until 9, and went into work for a few hours.

When they came home blown out, executed the tough love policy with Evan and Chris, piled them into the minivan and drove them to the Mount Sopris trailhead to meet Red and the Scot, hangovers be damned.

Wakeup call was a full 6 hours later to head up the classic Mount Sopris, towering at 12,995, 6000 feet above the Roaring Fork Valley floor.  Dramatic mountain to say the least, and with a couple inches of new snow, the skiing did not suck.  It was good enough to warrant a second lap up the thing.  Face shots in May...not entirely unheard of, but still spectacular.

Rounded out the day with a skin into Tagart Hut.  Guidebook said 6 miles in.  Then I read the fine print that it was 6 miles round trip.  It still took us 2:40, which made me a little sad that we were moving that slow.  Then I read the even finer print that it was 3 miles from the summer parking lot, and in fact 5.3 miles from Ashcroft.  Made me feel a little better about our pace.

Woke up to 8-10 inches of fresh snow.  When the alarm went off at 5am, we shut it off and went back to sleep.  Then we went to play in the powder...for a few hours until the weather socked us in again.  We tried to wait it out, huddled in near whiteout conditions on the side of the mountain.  Eventually gave up and skied blind back down to the hut, arrive promptly as the weather cleared.  Drank a beer and headed back up for round two.

Climbed a neat little couloir. Made it back to the hut in one piece. That's always a good thing.

Explored Montezuma basin the next day.  The terrain back there is amazing.  Some of the new snow had slabbed up quite scarily and we opted for lower angle powder turns instead of big lines.  Snow fell apart in the heat by 11:30 and we retired to the hut for post ski nap before egressing back to reality.

While the Scot, Red, and Evan had to be back in the Bubble, Chris and I had the whole week off of work to play.  Let's ski Snowmass.  Loaded up on 2.5 nights worth of food, slept at the trail head and took off the next morning for the ~10 mile approach to Snowmass lake.  I think had we taken the trail and not gotten lost in the woods, it may have taken slightly less than the 8.5 hours that it took us.  Setting up a tent and eating pad thai noodles never felt so good.

Woke up again to dumping snow.  I cursed the weather gods and stayed in the tent for a 14 hour stint before Chris lured me out to ski a little bit.  Did some nice cruisers between periods of flat light, exploring the basin.  When it miraculously cleared up in the evening, we remained cautiously optimistic that we could climb Snowmass in the morning.

Climb we did as the day dawned bluebird and 5 degrees F.  I must have aclimatized to the cold because I was dinking around in the tent with no gloves on.  3000 feet straight up from Snowmass lake, this has to be the biggest snowfield in Colorado.  Good views of Pyramid and the Maroon Bells, a sight line all the way to the valley floor, 6000+ feet down.

With the new snow, the skiing, again, did not suck.  While we'd pondered abandoning the attempt the day before, under bluebird skies, we were sad to leave.  But, when out of food, the belly dictates decisions more than emotions do.  The 4 hour egress back to the car was also bareable as we actually found the trail, didn't get lost, and surprisingly, didn't have to break trail at all.

Decided to call the trip good as we watched another weather system move in, Chris discovered a cracked edge on his ski, and camera batteries were close to dying.

Comments

[Le Pistoir]

holy jesus fuck. you nailed it for Snowmass. Way to go. I'm seething with jealousy :)