Weekend Warrior Pt. 1, Summit County, Colorado: April 30 - May 1 2016
When Mike invited me out as a partner for a weekend blitz to Colorado, I couldn't say no.
I essentially had been tapering since our
feeling that seasonal transition coming on, but the chance for one last hurrah of a Colorado adventure stoked my winter psyche. I had been maintaining a base line of aerobic fitness by running and cycling, and (thanks to Helen) managed to squeeze in a half marathon the weekend before the trip. Additionally, only having been above 11,000' elevation a handful of times, the first instance being within the last 2 years, I knew acclimatization would be a great personal challenge. The greatest challenge outside the logistics was that we booked our tickets without knowing the conditions 6 weeks ahead of time. Our schedule was to arrive in Denver by Friday night and depart Denver by red-eye Sunday night; giving us about a 48 hour window and back to work on Monday.
As the weeks counted down, we had a running rotation of objectives that we thought possible, based on our personal goals, scale and depth of challenge, our collective physical conditioning, and overall time frame. Then, the forecast showed a spring snow storm coming, which of course landed us with alpine ski touring plans for Mount Sniktau (13,240') and Mount Bierstadt (14,065') for Saturday and Sunday respectively pending safe and stable conditions. To say the least, we were ambitious.
(Hint: Unbelievable spring snow conditions)
Even with the pending arrival of a spring storm, we managed to make it to Summit County (~9000') by 2AM. Waking up after 5 hours of a "first night at altitude" sleep, we tried to assess conditions for our first tour and thankfully Loveland pass was open, which we had forgotten to plan in as it could very well been closed due to the storm, but our luck held out.
Filling up my BCA float pack air canister with a cool new toy, high pressure hand pump, first thing in the morning, just about 440 pumps!
We managed to squeeze in a quick Mcdonalds' breakfast, and got going from the pass by 11:30am with a planned trip time of ~5hrs, where we planned to skin up (~1300' elevation gain and ~1.6mi) to the summit and descend (~3500') the North ridge down to Herman Gulch where we left one of our cars, only a 3.5mi trip.
Almost a complete white out on the ascent
Mike has been fortunate in that acclimatization can be accomplished a bit quicker than the average sea-level denizen like myself.
Terrible high slope visibility and snow coverage just off the summit
The few hundred feet on the North ridge was wind scoured and the visibility was so flat, we couldn't tell when we were skiing over bumps, ridges, or rocks, so we descended cautiously for this portion. Too bad our skis couldn't be as happy as we were about to be.
Descending what eventually becomes knee-high powder
At last, our suffering was beginning to pay off as the storm began to wane, and elevation loss gave way to deeper powder. Albeit we skied onto the wrong ridge, we began to encounter safer low angle powder slopes and made it to tree line.
Even below tree line, I managed to cut loose a small storm slab. Here is the crown.
Mike standing on the freeze-thaw layer after the slab broke
This was a truly sobering moment since we had nearly turned off our avalanche hazard brains. Although we were smart about our line through the trees, maintained visuals on each other, and even had BC-Link radios, avalanches are absolutely unbiased and unforgiving. In this situation, the slab was small and only ran about 50 feet. Mike was on an island of safety above me so that in the worst case that if I slid into the tree and was partially buried, I could be reached within just a few seconds.
Descending the line/face that just broke way
That being said, I had the best powder run of my life down through these trees. There was about a foot of new snow on a solid freeze-thaw layer, and smaller open areas between the trees would magically appear as we followed the path of least resistance down. The rest of the descent was ethereal and all the suffering was totally worth it.
The trees opened up, revealing some of the most unbelievable lines I'd ever skied on.
Here is Mike cruising the hidden tree line.
Reaching the bike path, still ~1.2mi away from the car
With a lot of cramping, I finally made it out; Mike breaking trail the whole way
After nearly 7 hours later, we made it back to the car. We were worked, and this was only day 0.5, hour 15 at altitude.
