I had had my eye on skiing Mount Buckskin ever since I skied Tweto a handful of years back. The northwest face of Mount Buckskin is intricate and intimidating, and doesn’t always go. But, we knew with the northwest aspect that we were likely to find good powdery snow – leftovers from a storm earlier in the week. So, we decided to check it out.

We skinned starting at Climax Corner, staying near the valley floor. As we rounded the corner, we caught view of Mount Buckskin in the distance.

We climbed the obvious couloir to the lookers right of the summit rock, where we found dense powder. We knew the descent was going to be good.

As we passed by the summit rock, we kept gazing at the intricate maze of lines that seem to come down from the summit. Alas, we could not find one that seemed to actually go. But, these lines are truly a puzzle, and we still kept looking.

At the top of the notch, we rounded onto the south side of the mountain, which was softening, but quite supportable still. Eventually we gained the long ridge and made our way to the true summit, which is quite a ways southeast from the false summit seen from the Arkansas Basin. Frank on the summit.

There are a few different ski routes off of Mount Buckskin. By far, the easiest comes up from Kite Lake. Speaking of which, we caught some great views of Democrat and Cameron.

Emma Lakes Chutes on Democrat.

This line on Cameron doesn’t always go. But, it did last year and it was my last ski of the season, on July 2nd.

Mosquito Peak and Treasure Vault Mountain.

Another ski descent option on Mount Buckskin is on the southwest side, accessed from Mosquito Pass trailhead. If I were to ski this mountain again, I’d probably go this way as it does look quite enticing. Lucky us, we got to enjoy the upper part of this face during our descent.

Frank, enjoying turns on the southwest side of Mount Buckskin, Mount Tweto in the background.

Me on the southwest side.

Lines just a bit west of the false summit seemed promising.

But, we didn’t see a way through at the bottom. And given that I am still recovering from my accident, we decided to go with what we knew, which was basically what we had ascended. So, we made our way through the notch and onto the northwest couloir. Me.

Frank.
<img src=”https://dev.14erskiers.com/wp-content/gallery/buckskin_17may2020/DSC09385Frank.jpg” width=”800″ height=”535″ alt=”BBackcountry skiing on Mount Buckskinclass=”alignnone size-large” />

The upper part was filled with powder, and followed by delicious corn on the bottom.

And the corn continued through the moraine piles.

Aside from Mount Arkansas, Mount Tweto, Mount Buckskin, and the west face of Mount Democrat (which is rarely skible), the Arkansas Headwaters Basin holds some other amazing lines that don’t go to peak summits.

Unfortunately, we had a lot of “trap-door” to deal with on the way out. But we eventually made it!

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The road hasn’t gotten any smoother. And the mountain still stands. Since my accident, I had always known I wanted to return to ski it – whether is was this season or another, was the question. But, cards aligned. Weather and access opened up so that on Thursday May 14th, we were finally able to return and ski Horseshoe in good conditions.

While traveling on the bumpy road we reminisced about where the ambulance and helicopter each came to get me.

I am so thankful for such a quick response from Park County EMS and Frisco’s St. Anthony’s Flight For Life helicopter. From the time the incident happened to when I arrived at St. Anthony’s in Denver was well under two hours. Thank you to Frank and Susan for both showing up to the hospital shortly after my arrival, and for joining me on this meaningful day.

But, we didn’t stop at the site where the helicopter landed, or where the ambulance scooped me up. Today, the mountain lured us.

Roads like this are generally not being maintained by local authorities due to COVID-19 restrictions. But, someone came in here with an excavator and plowed most of the road to Leavick. We were thankful for this. It’s amazing how people can step up and take care of the things that matter to them most. If there’s one thing I appreciate about this Coronavirus bizarro world, it’s that. They even posted a sign indicating where to park so people wouldn’t try to go further, and likely get stuck.

We skinned on the road a little ways, and as we made the turn toward Horsehoe, we gaze upon the general area of the scene of my accident last July 6th. We were just a little further up this road, in a small lot with an incline.

It was a beautiful morning with moody weather.

The scenery complimented the mood – some areas well-covered with snow, and others nearly devoid of it. This area is full of contrasts.

It’s pretty obvious why this peak is named “Horseshoe Mountain”.

Our ascent would have us follow the gentle snow slopes on the right. Our descent would take us down the Boudoir Couloir which is the obvious snow break through the rocks just left of the peak. The southeast slopes that make up the left side of the horseshoe would also make a fun, but mellow, ski.

We skinned on.

A scene of contrasts was fitting for the moment.

Sometimes we had to hug the rocks to avoid a potential cornice fall to our left.

The weather was rather blustery on the summit. It was definitely a return to winter. So, we quickly transitioned, and made our way down the ridge to the start of our line.

Views of the Sawatch Range from the summit.

We paused at the abandoned cabin that more or less marks the start of the Boudoir Couloir.

Susan.

Then we skied Frank.

Susan.

Me.

Regrouping at the bottom, with Boudoir Couloir behind Susan and Frank.

Frank and I with Horseshoe Mountain behind.

One last look at Horseshoe, the mountain whose journey nearly killed me.

The bumpy road keeps going as my recovery continues. I have passed many a milestone and I couldn’t be happier to be where I am and able to do what I can do. But evidence of the accident still lingers. I still have metal in both my neck and my femur. I still don’t have feeling parts of my left hand and the pinky on my right hand is thickened and refuses to straighten. I continue to have an occluded vertebral artery, blocking blood flow to my brain and presenting a constant risk of a stoke. Aside from multiple scars all over my body, I also have swollen thighs, likely from a car tire running over them – scar tissue from trauma and surgery on the left, and a large persistent seroma on the right. I continue to have weakness in my left arm and some torn tissue in my pectorals still causes me pain. I have lost significant range of motion in my neck and work every day to gain more of it back. My body is forever changed.

These things are what they are. But I am not complaining because I am well aware that it could have been so much worse. I am lucky to be able to walk, let alone ski and bike, all of this just 10 months after.

Life is not always easy. But I am a big believer that challenges are obstacles we must overcome. The greater the challenge, the more enriching to who you are as a person. The world has changed in these last few months and we are all presented with new challenges we had never imagined before, just like I faced after my accident. But, just as I dug deep to thrive in my recovery, we all must dig deep to thrive in a world that is different from what we are used to. Just like I have had to do during my recovery, we must adjust to a new norm, and be appreciative of what we do have. Don’t strive for things to go back to the way they were because that may never happen. Don’t let fear and negative energy fill you, though it wants to suck you in. Instead, look for the light and focus on the positives happening in the world. They are everywhere. Just like I recovered from my accident, we can recover from this Coronavirus too, if we remain positive, embrace ingenuity, and believe in ourselves. Here’s to us healing together!

The post Horseshoe Ski (14 May 2020) – The mountain whose journey nearly killed me appeared first on 14erskiers.com.

The first week of May had been plagued with warm temperatures and week freezes. But, finally, the snowpack shifted from winter to spring, and this week had perhaps overly-solid freezes. Thankfully, that meant that we didn’t need to start very early for this one – 8:30 to be exact, with hopes to be skiing around 2 pm. Seems late for spring, but given our experience earlier in the week and the cold temps for the night, it seemed right.

We walked a ways in shoes, following the summer trail toward La Plata, which was a mix of dirt and snow. As elevation increased, the snow deepened and walking became more difficult. Around an elevation of 10,880 feet we left the trail and began skinning up the La Plata creek for faster, more efficient travel. Shortly after, we emerged out of the forest and eventually gazed upon Sayres Benchmark, with X-rated on the left and the large Grand Central Couloir cutting up to the right.

It’s like the mountain was made for skiing.

We skinned until the base of the mountain and then began for a nice bootpack up the Grand Central Couloir.

Before 1:30, we had reached the summit and enjoyed spectacular views of the Sawatch Range.

Despite the sunny day, the snow had barely warmed. Given the north and slightly west facing nature of X-rated, we were wondering what conditions we’d encounter. But, it turned out to be a mix of dense powder up high and corn down low. Frank.

Me.

At the intersection of the “X”, we intended to take the main gut straight down. On our approach, we noticed rock in that part of the line. Now we were staring down that very rock.

Frank took the jump into the rabbit hole.

Then me. Remember, I said there was powder?

Frank.

We regrouped at the base of the line and prepared for the long ski out of the valley. It was hard not to turn around 100 times to keep looking at this fabulous mountain.

When we entered the forest once again, we were able to ski along the creek for quite a ways before snow became too sparse and we had to make our way into the trees. That led to some “adventure skiing”.

Eventually, we made our way back to the trail and then back to our car. It turns out X-rated was everything I’d hoped it would be for all these years. Now, I can’t wait to go back!

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The North and Middle Sisters had been on my hit list ever since my Pacific Northwest trip of 2013. During that trip, I was able to ski South Sister. After my friend Zach and I skied Mount Rainier in May of 2018, a storm was hitting the northern part of the Cascades. But, heading south allowed for better weather. It looked like I’d be returning to Bend.

We drove from Seattle to Portland and then made our way over the mountains, making a detour to stop at Bagby hot springs along the way. We skipped going to Bend that night, ate dinner in Sisters, and set up camp at the trailhead nearby.

The weather had been cloudy and rainy most of the day, but as we headed toward our camp, the clouds parted and revealed our objectives for the next day. Middle Sister on the left, and North Sister on the right.

Home is where my camp is

All the gear that needs to fit on me or in my bag for the next day.

Knowing we’d have an early morning, we headed to bed shortly after the beautiful sunset.

We started in the dark, but it was not long before the sun rose. We made our way through the forest, which was dry for a ways. After a few miles, we left the trail and were able to start skinning. Before we knew it, we found ourselves at the feet of North and Middle Sisters.

North Sister was first on the list since we’d be skiing the south side. A view of Middle Sister on our ascent of North Sister.

I first laid eyes on Broken Top when I skied South Sister. She continued to beckon me from afar.

Mount Bachelor, the ski area.

A view of South Sister.

The east face of North Sister looked appealing, but not in the works for us since we also wanted to ski Middle Sister.

The ridge we used to ascend North Sister was rocky and loose, and took more time then we expected.

We reached the top of our south facing line and enjoyed some more views.

Now, Zach took pictures on that day. But, somehow I never got copies of them and at this point in time he doesn’t know where they are. So, this report is just going to have a whole lot of photos of Zach. Here, he’s dropping in to our line on North Sister with Middle Sister in the backdrop.

We skied down quite a ways before stopping and putting skins on for an ascent of Middle Sister. A view of our line on North Sister.

Zach ascending toward Middle Sister.

As we climbed the north ridge of Middle Sister, the snow became too firm to continue skinning, so we switched to booting instead. I do love a good bootpack

As we rounded the summit of Middle Sister, we gazed upon South Sister, and the clouds that were engulfing her, and headed our way.

Weather has a tendency to move in quick in the mountains, especially in the PNW. Before we knew it, we were descending in the ping-pong of the clouds.

Eventually, we descended below the clouds.

We skied a long ways down before putting the hiking shoes back on to finish out the trail back to our cars. Another successful outing among the volcanoes! North and Middle Sisters were fun ones to ski. It was another a long day – 14 hours, 14 miles, and 6600 vertical feet!

The post TBT: North and Middle Sisters Ski (17 May 2018) appeared first on 14erskiers.com.

Despite the onslaught of Coronavirus and the fact that life has basically been “closed” for about 6 weeks now, the skiing in the Elks has been quite good this spring. But, these last few days, it’s been exceptionally hot for being the end of April, which has brought a huge change in our snowpack. The percolation of water has caused our snowpack to become unstable and a wet slide avalanche caused the death of a community member on Tuesday. Because of this, Frank and I have stepped back from skiing for a little while to let the snow shift to a stable spring/summer snowpack. But, that doesn’t mean we can’t still post about skiing.

Last year was an even better spring for skiing. A stellar snow year made for great coverage. The one caveat was having to travel through avalanche debris leftover from a historic avalanche cycle that rampaged across our state during the end of February and early March. After a May storm hit our mountains, steeper lines slid out from the new snow on the hard surface underneath. But, mellower lines were skiing well as the new snow didn’t slide. Mt. Aetna is one of those mellower-style lines, but offers a long descent with relatively easy access. There’s a reason the Grand Couloir is a classic. I’d never skied it, though it had long been on my list. It was time to check this one off.

Mt. Aetna’s Grand Couloir faces south, and can easily be seen from near the summit of Monarch Pass. This year, it looked more like a snow-covered face rather than a couloir.

We were able to skin the majority of the access road and new snow helped us gain a few extra minutes of skinning time that didn’t exist a few days before. After about an hour and 1000 vertical feet, we left the road to ascent Mt. Aetna, another 3000 vertical feet to the summit.

As I mentioned, the slopes of Mt. Aetna are gentle. But it does ramp up for the last 1000 feet or so. Mark and I transitioned to booting while Frank kept skins on, eventually gaining the ridge on the lookers left.

The ascent route generally takes you a little north of the summit. So, once we gained the upper block, it was a quick walk on the ridge to the true summit.

Some views of the summit. Looking back, it’s amazing how caked the Southern Sawatch was, especially for mid-May!

Warming of the new storm snow made for a little bit of sticky conditions on the descent. All the same, it was still good. Frank.

Mark.

Me.

The road back to the car provided some easy skiing for the finish, with the exception of two paths of avy debris. These were interesting as the avalanches did not travel down a historic path. Rather, they created new ones.

It was a good day on a classic line during an epic year of snow-cover. If you’re thinking about hitting this line in mid-May in another season, expect different conditions most years. But, The Grand Couloir on Mt Aetna is certainly a classic!

The post TBT TR: Mt. Aetna Ski (12 May 2019) appeared first on 14erskiers.com.

Well, things are a little crazy in this Coronavirus bizzaro world, for sure. We’ll be writing more about that later. But, for now, we are taking time to post throwbacks on a backlog of adventures we’ve had in the mountains. Last season was a great season. So much that we were too busy skiing to write much about it. Now, we have some time to write. So, here we go…

In late February / early March, one of the biggest avalanche cycles happened in Colorado that we have in recorded history. It was state-wide, avalanches causing havoc during the cycle and causing numerous access issues for the rest of the spring and into summer. Even as I was able to start hiking in the fall after my accident in July, we crossed avalanche paths that still had not been cleared. So, we patiently waited for the snowpack to settle. Perhaps I was overly conservative. But, I didn’t backcountry ski from when we returned from our ski trip to Germany and Austria on March 8th until March 26th.

When I did finally ski, I met up with my two adventure friends, Larry and Zach for a little Powder Factory action. And it was good….

The morning skin was icy and firm, and somewhat difficult at times.

But we made it to the ridge in quick time where wonderful mountain views greeted us.

Though the snow was firm on our ascent, the refrigeration effect of the north aspect kept the snow we intended to ski quite nice. Zach dropping in.

Larry.

And a couple of me near the bottom.

What can I say? It was a fun day in the Powder Factory

The post TBT: Powder Factory (26 March 2019) appeared first on 14erskiers.com.

Well, it’s been a nearly a year since we were in the Tyrolean Alps skiing our hearts out for two weeks. When we arrived home, we managed to put a couple of reports together from our voyage. But, we got so busy jumping into spring ski season, that these reports got pushed by the wayside. Now that it’s the perfect time of year to be touring from hut to hut in the Alps, we thought we’d finish out documenting our journey.

The day before, we toured from Jamtal to Weisbadener Hutte. We had plans to potentially complete what most people call the Silvretta Tour by staying one more night at the Silvretta Hutte, just over the border in Switzerland. However, we knew that bad weather was on the way, and snow falling could make glacier travel difficult and dangerous, and we could have a challenging exit back to Galtur. So, we decided to jump the gun and skip the last night. But, that didn’t mean that we couldn’t enjoy a tour on the Ochsentaier Glacier before we departed, which beckoned us with it’s twinkly white from the Weisbadender Hutte.

In the morning, the sun shone bright as predicted. But the front was still on the way. We left the bulk of our gear still in the hut as we skinned our way over to the Ochsentaier Gletscher. The terrain near the bottom of the glacier was generally steep and sidehilled, and a little treacherous for the firm skinning conditions we encountered, even though tracks were beaten into the snow. I don’t have pictures from that terrain – because, frankly, I was gripped and didn’t want to fall into the crevasse below me – but here’s a couple from when it started to ease up.

As we climbed higher on the Oschentaier Glacier, it kept getting more and more beautiful – a very airy, other-wordly scene.

I started to enjoy myself.

First looks at the Piz Buin twins, standing at 10,866 ft and 10,679 ft.

The Piz Buin dominated the landscape and the photos don’t do them justice. They are actually relatively large. For perspective, can you see the three backcountry skiers in this photo?

And then, before we knew it, the Tyrolean Alps revealed themselves. Here, I gaze upon one of our descent toward the Weisbadener Hutte the day before.

But we had more skinning to do. We were headed toward a saddle called Egghomlucke, which sat on the border between Austria and Switzerland.

The enticing Sivrettahorne, 10,643 ft.

Our visit on the saddle was quick and dirty as the wind howled over it. We waved to Switzerland for the umpteenth time on our tour and quickly headed back down to warmth and shelter a few hundred feet below. Views of Switzerland.

Frank on the saddle.

Then, it was ski time. Frank.

Conan was not really on the picture program

Me.

The Weisbadener Hutte below.

We gathered our things in the hut, and then down valley we went, heading toward the beautiful Silvertella Stausse (reservoir), where we turned east toward Galtur.

The afternoon was hot, and we marveled at the numerous wet slide avalanches that poured down from the mountains, still relatively far away from our route of travel. We ended our tour at a small town called Wirl, where Conan hopped on a bus and retrieved our car from Ishgl.

While our tour the day before from Jamtal to Weisbadener was more exciting in terms of skiing, I think this tour on the Oschentaier Gletscher was the most scenic. Though it was a wrap for our awesome Silvretta tour, our trip was far from done. Next destination, Saint Anton. We had powder to ski

Here’s a look at our route for the day!

The post TBT: Silvretta Tour Part 3- Weisbadener Hutte & Ochsentaier Glacier (28 Feb 2019) appeared first on 14erskiers.com.