Wildsnow.com had a great photo of the
Landry Route four days before we skied it. Chris Davenport also ran a great
trip report two years ago with some better photos than I have, and here is a cool story about the
first descent in 1978.
We fired up the snowmobile at 1:00 AM at the T Lazy 7 Ranch and gunned it the 8 miles up to Maroon Lake where we parked and started marching under the full moon. We made quick progress up to Crater Lake and into the cirque below the mighty North Face of
Pyramid. The route up the Northeast Ridge is fairly obvious and before we knew it we were on the ridge at 13,000' looking in awe over at a faint boot pack going up the summit block and down the intimidating East Face. We were way too early and it was freezing so we chilled here for a few hours waiting for the temps to rise.
Eventually things started to warm up. We could hear the snow melting so we decided to make our way along the ridge and toward the summit. Just then we noticed a lone snowboarder booting up the East Face. He was hauling ass so we gave him a little space to get in front of us and were happy to have him buff out the booter.
Looking down the booter.
We were about halfway up the summit cone when he came down and rode it in style!
East Maroon Creek lies 4,000' below!
Capitol and Snowmass from the summit.
We skied off the summit around 9:00.
The snow was variable; a little powder here, some corn there, but overall pretty good. It's all a little scary as you're making steep turns directly above 300'-400' cliff, but luckily that goes on for only a few hundred feet and then we were into the couloir, which falls for another two thousand or so and is still pretty steep.
One of the guys who skied it on the 19th summed up the top section pretty well:
"Very intimidating and commiting, but also rewarding. For those aspiring to ski it, do not underestimate the severity and of the upper snowfields, and the line as a whole for that matter. In order to get around the rock bands on the summit ridge, you must make at least several mandatory jump turns on the 60 degree slope above the massive cliff."
One of us coming around the corner from the scary part at the top.
Looking up the couloir. It split here so the skier two and three took different paths. What this photo didn't capture was the slough flying by me on both sides!
Just before the line joins the main snowfield the couloir splits in two directions; the skiers left (and fall line) go over a 100' cliff. The right is the exit couloir. A little sideslipping and a few jump turns later and we were in the huge snowfield below ripping huge corn turns.
This was a really, REALLY cool and unforgettable run on an awesome mountain!
I'll try to edit in more photos if I can squeeze them out of skier two and three.
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