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Thread: TR: San Juan Mountains 2/9-18
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02-19-2007, 07:06 PM #1
TR: San Juan Mountains 2/9-18
Have you ever gone on a trip that frustrated you so much on the first day that all you want to do is bag it all and go home? That's how our most current trip to the northern San Juan mountains in Colorado started off, but perseverance and some much-needed luck paid off to make this one of our most epic trips to date!
Allow me to introduce to you our main protagonists.
SkiNowWorkLater:
Non-mag EJ (a.k.a. "Kenny"):
The beautiful San Juan Mountains:
And now introducing our story's antagonist, Mt. Sneffels:
The original plan was to fly into Montrose, CO on Friday 2/9, drive to the Yankee Boy Basin trailhead just outside of Ouray, skin up to the basin and set up camp by 10PM. The next morning we would evaluate snow conditions on the south side of Sneffels and climb up to Lavendar Col and the summit to make a ski attempt at Snake Couloir on the north side of the mountain. Afterwards we planned to spend the next 4 nights at the Ridgway hut and do day touring from there. On the 15th we were going to do an easy resort day at Telluride before finishing up our trip with 2 days at Silverton!
Awesome plan. Unfortunately it started to go to shit on the drive up to the Yankee Boy Basin trailhead. Our POS 2wd rental sedan only made it about 1 mile out of the 7.5 miles we needed to drive before skinning up. Steep grades and icy roads matched with balding tires kept us from getting any further. Luckily we found some cool ice climbers in Ouray with a 4wd who offered to drive us the 7.5 miles to the trailhead. We drove 2 miles up the road and all of a sudden the road ended. At this point we found out that they don't plow the whole 7.5 miles to the trailhead in the winter. . Start skinning.
Midnight comes, we're still skinning, and we're both exhausted. Finally non-mag EJ calls it. "I'm done for the night!". We camp right around 11,000ft. instead of the planned 12,500.
Wake up at 5:00AM the next morning for our summit attack. We're both still exhausted, and we're already behind schedule. Here is SkiNowWorkLater on the skin up, not looking too awake or excited to be here:
We get into the basin and the whole south side of the mountain is covered in a nasty breakable sun crust. It made going really tough and slow, and skiing back down at the end of the day would have been downright dangerous, so we bagged our plan to ski Snake Couloir. I've been thinking about skiing the Snake for the past 4 months of my life, and that was it. So close... but in the end we were smart and we made the right decision to turn back. Now all we had to do was skin back the 7 miles to the car, eat lunch in Ridgway, and then skin 6.5 miles into the Ridgway hut. We made it to the hut around 8:00PM on Saturday. Once we got to the hut we both collapsed on the bunks, and non-mag EJ wisely commented "this is not fun." Skiing conditions were so bad that we were thinking of spending the next 4 days just sleeping in the hut and then just going home.
So far, you're thinking "this trip report really sucks!" and you're right. That's because so far the trip really sucked. But at this point Ullr smiled down upon our little hut and we woke up the next morning to a couple of cm's of fresh snow and it didn't stop snowing until the day we left! Every day we had fresh snow, awesome terrain and views, and nobody around to share it with! All in all we got around 15" of new snow in the 4 days we were at the Ridgway Hut.
Non-mag EJ in gettin' some:
SkiNowWorkLater gettin' the same:
Oh yeah!
Some posing shots:
Dramatic terrain and views while skinning:
Even a bit of bootpacking to get to the goodness:
More powder stoke. The snow was so light and blower that our spindrifts were floating 30 feet behind us as we flew by!
Our last two days in the Ridgway hut were shared with an amazing group of people, including John Fielder (the famous CO photographer), the guy who designed the Scarpa T1 and T2 telemark boots, and the owner of the San Juan huts system. These were all super intresting fellows and we had some great end-of-day conversations.
On our 4th day we had to skin out to continue our trip, but it was still snowing hard and conditions were way too good to just leave, so we got up early, punched in two 1000ft runs before noon and then skinned out the 6.5 miles back to our car. The skin out was a lot easier and enjoyable than the skin in, and we both had the permagrins going as we thought back on what transpired the last 4 days.
Some skintrack stoke:
But our trip was not yet over! Thursday 2/15 we skied Telluride. Although it was supposed to be a pretty easy day to recover before going to Silverton, the snow was just too good and soft to take it easy, and we spent all day non-stop skiing and hit every one of T-ride's double black runs. While soaking in the Ouray hot springs with Nalgene's full of gin and tonic, we both agreed that Telluride is a cool place.
I also had my first maggot experience at Telluride. While hiking up to Genevieve with my Bro Models on my shoulder, suddenly I hear "Change for a nickel!?" from a group of guys checking out the same run. I met a cool fellow mag who just got back from the Alta Straightline camp and was in T-ride for a buddy's wedding (sorry dude I forget your name).
The last 2 days of our trip at Silverton were super epic as well! Our guide, Alex Hunt, was super cool and we skied some crazy terrain. At the end of our last day, while watching EJ hike across the stream back to the road, I reflected back on this trip in amazement at how bad it started out, but how quickly it turned around! Hope you enjoyed.
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02-19-2007, 07:14 PM #2
beauty! great shots. another season of kickass TR's is indeed under way.
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02-19-2007, 07:15 PM #3
SIIICK!!! I have just recently fallen in love with the San Juans. Finest TR in a while. Thanks.
Chocolate? This is doodoo, BABY!
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02-19-2007, 07:16 PM #4Registered User
- Join Date
- May 2005
- Posts
- 3,972
Enjoyed quite well, thank you.
I guess sometimes you just have to work now to ski later, eh?
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02-19-2007, 07:20 PM #5
The San Juans are amazing...winter or summer. Did they say anything about the heli-skiing rumor while you were at Silverton?
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02-19-2007, 07:21 PM #6
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02-19-2007, 07:22 PM #7Registered User
- Join Date
- Oct 2003
- Location
- Colorado
- Posts
- 298
The San Juan's are always nice, no matter what the conditions.
Nice TR.
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02-19-2007, 07:25 PM #8
Looks like all the frustration and troubles you had in the beginning paid off in the end. Good to see you guys got some fresh snow during your stay.
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02-19-2007, 07:26 PM #9
Great shots coupled with an amazing write up. Thanks for the TR.
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02-19-2007, 07:44 PM #10Registered User
- Join Date
- Apr 2006
- Posts
- 6
motivation to take a week off! rode with Alex up in JH probably 4 yrs ago, is he still riding the freeheels down there?
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02-19-2007, 07:53 PM #11
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02-19-2007, 08:17 PM #12I call bullshit
- Join Date
- Dec 2006
- Location
- Bay area, cali
- Posts
- 1,895
great terrain shots. Thanks for sharing! sic!
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02-19-2007, 08:20 PM #13
Nice timing on the trip! Getting a lot of fresh down south isn't always easy, but it really looks like you scored.
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02-19-2007, 08:33 PM #14thank you very little
- Join Date
- Jun 2006
- Posts
- 2,051
Nice pics...good writing too.
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02-19-2007, 08:43 PM #15
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02-19-2007, 08:50 PM #16
Nice shots
Big mountain or Bust.
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02-19-2007, 09:08 PM #17
Awesome TR...and great pics. The San Juans are beautiful.
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02-19-2007, 09:11 PM #18
Most excellent! Thanks for San Juan stoke.
`•.¸¸.•´><((((ş>`•.¸¸.•´Ż`•.¸.•´Ż`•...¸><((((ş>
"Having been Baptized by uller his frosty air now burns my soul with confirmation. I am once again pure." - frozenwater
"once i let go of my material desires many opportunities for playing with the planet emerge. emerge - to come into being through evolution. ok back to work - i gotta pack." - Slaag Master
"As for Flock of Seagulls, everytime that song comes up on my ipod, I turn it up- way up." - goldenboy
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02-19-2007, 09:20 PM #19
Awesome adventure! You guys should stick around, you brought a lot of snow with you!!!!
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02-20-2007, 05:29 AM #20
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02-20-2007, 05:30 AM #21
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02-20-2007, 05:31 AM #22
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02-20-2007, 09:36 AM #23
Fantastic! Great stuff SNWL. Excellent shots with great narrative - I can wait to get down that way in a couple weeks!
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02-20-2007, 09:41 AM #24
I like it alot.
Fighting leads to killing, and killing gets to warring. And that was damn near the death of us all.
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02-20-2007, 09:50 AM #25
way to stay positive... nice work
We hold daggers in the side of the Moon...
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