TR: Gore Range Slushwallow
Cross posted from TTips 'cause Frank Zappa gave me shit for not posting TR's here:
By telepariah:
The noblest of goals sometimes fall prey to circumstances. In our case--at least in part--we were chickenshits. We also carried way too much whiskey. Our objective was a steep and treacherous north face descent but we wound up skiing an easy south face. Rockfall and rotten snow can and should have a sobering effect on the ambitions of the most hopeful ski mountaineers.
We started by touring some trophy homes. I can confidently predict that some these houses cost more than I will make in my entire life.
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A long hike to snowline led to a painful slog in rapidly melting and unconsolidated snow.
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We stumbled onto our lake and our campsite in the dark, had a late dinner of curried vegetables and rice, then drank bourbon until 1:00 am. Next morning we set out on a quest to find the next drainage and our glorious north face. We might have continued wallowing on but the return trip promised to be much worse, so we returned to camp. In mid afternoon, we heard voices. It turned out to be a single voice--a woman cursing herself for having lost her hat. She soloed up, skied a line under the rockfall and wet soughs above our camp, and skied out all in a day. She postholed in and skied on alpine skis. Unbelievably strong! She passed through our camp quickly and we didn't even get a picture.
Here is Christian at the point where we decided not to continue the folly of slogging in rotten snow just as the woman we met was skiing a line above our camp.
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After another gluttonous meal of jasmine rice with saffron and fresh vegetables (and more bourbon) we set an alarm for 5:00 hoping to find something worth skiing the next day. Here is Christian looking up at the cirque above our camp.
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And still smiling just as the routefinding was about to get interesting.
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The next several hundred feet was a teetering scramble up loose, blocky talus. When we finally reached snow again and started skinning, snow fell from the sky.
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Here is just a fraction of the lines in the Gore Range that have probably never been skied.
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We found more rotten snow so we skied below that. I augered badly in a soft patch but Christian made it all look easy. Where the snow was best, on southwest facing slopes above 12,000 feet, it was a surface of about two inches of refrozen graupel that shattered like little glass beads all around our skis.
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Hiking out was a grunt. Toes hammered and quads burned as we skied down to snowline and then hiked the trail back the the trophy neighborhood. A tailgate beer followed by a gusty thunderstorm sent me home tired but supremely satisfied. We didn't ski any north or east facing couloirs due to rockfall and avalanches. But it was great to get away from civilization for a couple of days and ski some creamy corn on south to southwest aspects. Oh yeah, and we drank all the whiskey. Can't wait until Indy Pass in two weeks!
