Got out on the 30th with Arena and Nally for some backcountry skiing in Rocky Mountain National Park. Conditions are crazy advanced - more like it should be in early May. Not much snow this season, which might mean some trouble down the road, as little snowmelt means a dry summer. We shall see. Anywhoo - pictures below.
We hit up the Dead Elk couloir, which is to the left of the sharp pointy ridge in the photos. The trek in was itself pretty spectacular, and as is often the case with backcountry, it took several hours to skin-in to the base of the couloir, an additional hour to hike up it (Nally and Arena were considerably faster on the snow climb then my slow, overly-cautious self), and then about 20 minutes to ski down. It was a great ski, though the late spring conditions were a bit of a shock and the snow was so choppy I took a bit of a spill at one point. Other than that, great day out. On the way back, we even had some extra time to play around with jumping off a drop.
Pictures are below, all taken by Arena.
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| Looking up at our route. Dead Elk is obscured to the left of the central, pointy peak, Dragontail is to the right. |
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| Rabbit we saw on the way in. |
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| Taking the climbing skins off my skis before we started the snow climb up. |
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| Looking down the couloir. You can see me in the distance, falling behind. Oops. Pretty great view though, right? Hard to beat this at a lift-served resort. |
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| Arriving at the top of the route.... |
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| Anthony's boots, with Dan and I getting ourselves situated prior to the descent. |
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| About to head down. You can somewhat make out via the shadows the choppy texture of the snow. |
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| ...and heading down. |
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