Today was one of my coolest experiences and opportunity in the back country! My friend Chuck invited me to go a skin with him and the director of COBS (Colorado Outward Bound Schools). I knew this was going to be a great trip no matter what happened and I was going to learn a lot. With chuck knowing everyone at copper we got a sled to pull us form the bottom of copper to the access gate on the far west side of copper at 8:00 am. We got to the access gate and started off the day with a nice mellow ski down to Guller Creek. Me being the youngest and least educated of the group thought that I would be in the back watching and learning........WRONG. We threw on the skins, I took lead, and off we went towards Jacques Ridge! Good thing I have been working on breaking trails and navigating because after an hour and half of breaking trail threw deep dark timber some how I put us out right on top of the ridge,BOOOYAA!
We put on some new layers knowing that we were going to be above treeline for the next few hours. Getting to the high point on the ridge was not to bad, you just had to stay away from the edge because of the fairly good size cornice all the way across. We made it about 1/4th of the way across the ridge before we ducked behind some rocks and had a quick lunch. After lunch it was back into the wind and new challenges. We had to skin across some very exposed faces, then we ran out of snow and had to do some rock/dirt scrambling up to the top of Jacques Peak! We didn't stay on the top for long but got a quick summit shot off then it was time to ski! We had some awesome turns down the east ridge back to the Copper Mtn boundary. We got back into the ski resort and enjoyed are very mellow ski back to the bass of Copper.