I met with 2 guys from fort colins at about 4:50am at the bakersville exit on saturday.
We pormptly raced upto the top of loveland pass and started hiking at about 5:20. The views from the trail as the sun came up.
Things were going well and we weren't very tired by the time we reached the summit of our first destination.
The summit of Grizzly:
The views were also pretty nice from the summit, there is alot of nice looking lines that drop into montezuma. I need to learn more about access to that area.
I got a couple of shots of the first line of the day (the east couloir on Grizzly) but not any action shots because no one else in my group was really fired up to shoot in the couloir(because my Cannon XTI is too big and diging it out of a pack is a hassle).
From on top of the line:
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More shots of the line from a different perspective (from the bottom of our second line):
The cornice on top of the line was really small and the snow up top was really fresh, it was sloughing pretty good for the first guy in our group. I dropped second and it was still really fresh, I ripped it up the whole way!
What a sick line!![]()
If that wasn't enough to be happy with we all asked each other how we felt and all agreed that we were up for the next challange.
So we booted over to the north face of Torreys. Wow, I have tried to summit this bitch with snow on it 3 times prior to this and have always fallen short. 2 times from stevens gulch and once from loveland pass (got to grizzly but had no ski gear so we bailed)
. I felt really confident about this attempt however.
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If you have never climbed the north face on torreys before let me tell you it is somewhat of a challange compared to the other routes (kelso ridge is less daunting to me). About 3/4 of the way up the north face I had hit the wall, I was pretty spent, and had to stop for some more food, and break into my last bottle of water. After a short break I pushed on and the next thing I knew I was on the west ridge near the summit! Success is within grasp finally!![]()
A summit shot:
At this point in time it was already 1pm so the dead dog was looking really scary with alot of fresh sun baked pow, one of the members in our group had already rode that line anyway and didn't want to do it again. So we all decided it was alot safer and smarter to save the DD for another day (possibly early season next year when access is still possible from stevens gulch) and we all rode the long north face.
some shots from in the line:
Some shots from back at the highway at bakersville:
We rode the middle finger if you couldn't tell.
What a great long day!
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