As I was going to bed last night I was planning on skiing with a friend from boulder, I picked Mt. Trelease for the morning. This way he wouldn't have to drive all the way to summit county. Mt Trelease is on the Front range side of the Continental divide, meaning he would only have to drive to Loveland, saving him a little bit of driving time/gas. He pulled the school card at the last minute, meaning I am not bro enough to hang with him and his boulder bros! With this all coming down last minute I told my self if I woke up and it was nice I would go. When I woke up it was just that, clear blue sky's, I hit the ground running! Even thought my face is still falling off I had to get a little bite of sunshine before we go back into the low pressure cycle. I got in the truck and decided to stick to my plan and check out Trelease. As I started to skin up my brain turned into the safety machine and route finder. I start to evaluate the snow, in the trees the skin track was great, coming out of treeline there was some wind blown snow but nothing to worry about yet. As I came out of treeline I saw the main bowl above me with lots of snow and wind. I stopped and started to make a plan. I was going to skin up the south west facing ridge, avoid the cross loaded south facing slope, and plan to ski the south west facing slope off of the south east ridge. I picked to ski this line because it had slide about a week ago (I would say). By skiing the park that had already slide I new that there was no way i could trigger the deep persistent slab problem and there would only be about 3-5 inches of wind slab to deal with (even though caic said wind loading only on N-NE-E-SE facing slops). When I started to ski the south west bowl I found a ridge that went right down the middle. I new if I skied the ridge then I could send my sluff off to either side of me. I also thought that if something was to go on me I would have a better chance of staying out of the slide if i was up on a ridge, rather then in the gully of the bowl. I LOVE IT WHEN EVERYTHING WORKS OUT!!!!! The bowl skied great, I skied down to treeline where two other people watched me. We talked about the snow and why I skied there, they were pumped and headed up to mimic my tracks. I enjoyed a nice 1,000 vertical foot ski in some awesome 27 degree trees back to the truck! Took just about an hour and half for 1,500 vertical feet of skiing. Awesome place to go play if you only have a little bit of time to get out! |
0 Comments
We recognized that are hazards for the day where going to be sluff management and variable snow conditions. With a clear line of view top to bottom I dropped first. I had some great turns and some really sketchy turns, this was the first time that my knee really didn't like what I was doing. Taking it nice and easy I stopped on top of a ridge where I new the sluff from Henry and Keran would not hit me so I could get some pics. We measured the bottom part of the couloir at 41 degrees, the upper part has to be a little higher then 45 degrees. After we measured and regrouped we skied one by one to the bottom, bush waked threw the aspens, back to the summer trail and out we went. All in all it was a nice hour and a half trip with some fun turns and we had a great time with Keran!
|
AuthorConor McDonald Archives
May 2015
Categories
All
|