Quandary Peak Ski Descent

It has been a busy week at Snowmass and I have been teaching the kids every day. Luckily the snow and the weather have been fantastic. This morning I was e-mailed some pictures from Dakota and Jason, friends from Boulder, whom I did a ski descent of Quandary Peak with in January. This picture is Quandary, which lies just South of Breckenridge, taken from the Monte Cristo trailhead. Our line follows the ridge coming at the camera straight down from the summit to the cleanest couloir which drops off to the left. This is the same line which Chris Davenport took during his fourteener quest, and formed a really awesome and interesting adventure. The avalanche danger at the time was very low, and it is obvious that the wind had been scouring the peak for weeks.

I met Dakota, who is one of my best friends, and his friend Jason, a tele-er whom I had never met before, at the trailhead at 9:30am. These two have been skiing together a lot this season in the backcountry, but for me this was day one. Needless to say I was excited. All season I have been dreaming of skiing from the tops of peaks, and this day was my first chance. We began skinning up through the trees in spectacular sunny and warm weather, soon gaining the classic East ridge, a route I had climbed once before with my mom when I was about 12 or 14. It was really nice to have such pleasant weather, a far cry from two previous attempts of mine to climb Quandary in the winter, which were both thwarted by heinous storms.

We made short work of the ridge, but as we neared the summit the wind picked up to gale force, making us stagger as if drunk, our skis acting as sails attached to our backs. We had the opportunity to watch many other skiers make turns of varying quality down the East Bowl, but we were psyched on our South facing line. Here is Dakota and I on the summit, where we removed our skins and mounted up as fast as possible, intent on getting out of the wind, and really excited for the 3,400ft. descent that awaited us.

We were able to ski straight off the summit, and headed back down the ridge to the top of the couloir. The coverage was thin and we were forced to take our skis off a couple of times, but usually for no more than about 6 feet. This is me at the wide entrance to the couloir. The snow was extremely hard and compacted windslab; not ideal but pretty much what we expected. The view down as we skied was deceptive, and what looked like a reasonable pitch actually went on forever. Numerous times we switched leads, heading towards the bottleneck, and the unknown, at the bottom.

As the slope pinched down it turned into some fantastic tight turns through cliff bands, shown here. Below is Jason assessing our options through the hidden cliffs below. We went left and made some exposed turns before having to take the skis off to down climb a 15 foot section of rock. From there it was a little bit of willow weaving and then a two mile cruise along the snowed in summer road back to our cars and the beer. All in all this was easily one of the best days I've had this season, great friends, great weather, and a really great run.