icy skiing in dead elk couloir, RMNP

[trogdortheburninator]

With plans for some proper steep skiing, we set out saturday with a full kit of ski-mo gear. Unfortunately the sun decided to stay hidden all day up north (contrary to reports around I-70 ). With steeper objectives ruled out, we skied the dead elk couloir from the top. I've wanted to ski the top of this route for a while, but never did due to various other strips of snowing lining the front range and drawing my attention.

The route makes a pretty cool transition from tundra to a sliver of snow. With corn the whole line would be a blast. With ice, it is a different type of fun. I doubt the top will stay in long unless spring storms keep rolling in. The middle section is about 20' of dirt. We rapped from a fixed anchor (that we beefed with fresh cord) because we had the gear. Down climb also looked pretty trivial, but we would have had to put back on pons, so breaking out the rope wasnt much more effort. More heavy spring storms could conceivably bring the line in top to bottom with a trivial huck at the rap. Would be cool to see that. Has anybody skied this line clean?

Here's a short video of the day.

[spankthepow]

Way to get it! The rope was a good idea as that down climb is pretty interesting.

[Fritz]

Nice work. I think it would take a pretty big year to ski it clean. We hit it on a pretty big snow year a few years back and still had to down climb a bit (although we didn't have to rapp). Fun line.

[skiingfiddler]

on Friday had a similar experience in the Corral couloir, except when we got to the apron of dead elk it was getting dangerously wet. I learned that day about how wind can cause even a sunny day to never soften.. good work, a lot more rmnp season ahead!