Sangree M. Froelicher Hut Trip

As mentioned in the CB wrap up, I was headed out the door to go spend the weekend at the Sangree M. Froelicher Hut at 10,700 feet on an alpine ridge above Leadville, CO. This hut is run through the 10th Mountain Division Huts (which were created in honor of the ski troops from Colorado that fought in WWII-pretty interesting history-website here: http://www.huts.org/)
We took off from Denver on Thursday afternoon and headed up into the mountains (oh I'm typing this on Polly's computer so the letter that comes after I is missing it is because here key doesn't work) to a nuking winter storm that seemed to be crowding in the Tunnel. Mel and I had signed up for this particular hut trip because it was also an AIARE Avalanche 1 certification class. I was pretty certain that a lot of what we learned for this would be review for me but I figured I should take the official certification anyways and theres nothing like spending a whole weekend in the backcountry studying avalanches to get it into your skull. In fact, when we got up there it seemed to me that I was actually the most experience of all the people taking the class. In fact, there were several people there who had zero backcountry experience, which I was a little surprised about. Anyways, the class got me pretty geared up to take my Avalanche II certification and was a phenomenal review to get me to start thinking like an avalanche.
So we had the class Thursday night and Friday morning and then departed for the trailhead from the Leadville Hostel (where I am totally staying the next time I end up in Leadville) on Friday AM. The trailhead started by heading up Buckeye Gulch towards Buckeye Peak. It was about a 3 mile skin with about 1600 feet of elevation gain. Not too bad, but an interesting experience doing it with 12 people. I'd never skinned with that many folks in one group. For the size of the group we kept up a pretty consistent pace. Mel did really well, only minimal swearing this time, considering it was her second time skinning. The scenery was mainly below treeline, but I struck up a pretty consistent amount of conversation with one of our guides Deborah Keller (she works for the Powder Cat operation off the back of Aspen Mountain, she's great! Highly recommended) for most of the trip up, so between swapping stories and trying to breathe the uphill went pretty quickly. The scenery got gorgeous as we neared treeline as, the ridge line we were on had stunning views of rollers and the mountains that Independence Pass goes over. And suddenly peaking through a pine grove about 20 feet down from treeline, the Sangree hut appeared through the mountains. This hut was a beautiful restored log cabin complete with solar array, wood burning stove and an outhouse. Everything had a pine and wood burning odor to it that welcomed you the second you stepped in the front door. (Side note: none of the pictures came out all that great so the editing has been shafted for the moment, however whats a blog without pictures?)
So returning to the story at hand. After a quick drop off of stuff and another round of classroom session with our guides Scott and Deborah, myself and a few of the other gentlemen on the trip decided to rip up above treeline to find something to ski down. The work up went fast, sans packs and all, what we managed to find was slabby wind swept snow and really really really cold weather. After locating our options we decided to make a hasty retreat below treeline and back into the hut. I decided to go last as I was trying to snap some of photos of the high alpine at sunset and with one last glimpse at the alpenglow settling in over the west I jetted down through some wonderful trees that seemed to be holding nothing but fresh powder.
This was my longest trip out into the backcountry and also my first time traveling with guides. While we were distinctly in a classroom setting we did definetly get times to ski on our own which was awesome. It was great to meet some new backcountry partners. I really enjoyed being able to pick up the language and knowledge of the guides, in fact, I made it a point to talk to them as much as humanly possible to see if any of their knowledge could rub off on me.
Saturday dawned after a night of crashing out and only a few midnight outhouse runs to extremely cold weather. Scott and Deborah had long prepared us that we might have to change from the usual Saturday plans for the class as the weather was just that bad, which was the case. This is generally the way of backcountry travel, you have to be flexible and be aware that a lot of times your going to go with plan B or even plan C so this wasn't really a problem. It's part of the experience and part of what inspires your time in the mountains and turns your experience just that much more into a living breathing thing, which is how you have to treat mountains some times.
True to the name of this blog, later in the day we got some of the best tree runs in that I have had in a long time. Mark (first time mentioned here, potentially to be mentioned again) and I yo-yoed a few runs right outside the cabin right around dusk. There is a sublime feeling that comes from skiing through trees with deep powder, it's like a less operatic technical line. Same high consequences but something softer and more sublime that conquering a massive cliffed in chute. These runs that we skied had close together trees, laced in by deep powder, but alternated with rollers and open meadows.
The next day we woke up to a flurry of packing and a gorgeous sunrise peaking in through the windows. I really love waking up to the sun rising over mountains and creating an alpenglow that bounces right off the snow and in through the windows. The soft tranquility of it just knocks your socks off and made me leap out of my bed to get to my camera. Today was the day that we were departing the Sangree hut and once again due to a lack of snow on some of the rollers that usual route finding tips are done on we would be skiing in the trees again on some broad open slopes that would take us right down to the trailhead. We ended up departing the hut around 10:30 and skiing through some glade runs that took us straight to the bottom of Buckeye Gulch and right back to our trailhead. We went pretty slowly as we had some beginning telemarkers with us, who practically fell down the slopes (skiing up until this point had been totally optional), but ended up back at the trailhead and the car at 11:30 am.
I'm still not quite sure what my full thoughts on the weekend were, I felt as though the class had loads of practical information in it and the experience itself was one that any aspiring alpinist should start off with. I guess I'll leave this post with a quote that I just read that I seem to like, "Both activities (climbing and skiing) are more than just sports: they are ways of coming into intense and beautiful relationships with mountains, and that was what I wanted in my life." -Bela G. Vadasz
I think this weekend is summed up in this quote for me. To have a relationship, you have to give and take, but when you have a relationship with a mountain, it will give you so much, but when it needs something you had better respect that intense and beautiful bond and give it what it needs.
On the stereo-Dispatch, Hey Hey

Steeze=Style and Ease

Gotta make this a fast Crested Butte wrap up as I'm leaving for the Avy 1 class at the Sangre M. Froelicher Hut in less than an hour (sweet!). I've been meaning to write this for a few days but the internet at my apartment has been in and out, so that has made it quite difficult. Went to Crested Butte last weekend to be greeted by an unexpected 20 inches of snowfall that seemed to be blowing in over Monarch Pass. I think this was the first time I had ever actually driven over Monarch (Rapetti drove us over it last year on the epic Silverton, Wolf Creek adventure) and I gotta say that it is one big mountain pass. It made me really excited to try skiing at Monarch at some point this year. Anyways, I love the southwest part of this state. There is something so incredibly western and rugged about it that sometimes when you live in Denver and constantly ski in Summit County is really easy to lose touch with. That portion of the state while significantly less affluent seems to have the true westerners love of space, space and more space. It's not an area that I'd go wandering around private property in.
On to Crested Butte, Crested Butte sort of feels like a reverse Aspen, (which is interesting because as the crow flies, they are only 30 miles apart over Pearl Pass and the Maroon Bells). It felt to me (and I'm sure that Mel will disagree with this) like you could really sense the mining town and rancher roots of the town much more so than in Aspen. In CB, the ranches come straight up to the resort town, in Aspen, the ranches are all owned by movie stars. The peak itself of CB is phenomenally beautiful. For the few moments that we glimpsed it (the whole valley was socked in the entire weekend we were there), it's an epic pointed peak that looms out of the center of the valley, with a jagged cut to it that pierces into the sky. To quote a local on the lift, "I moved here because I was looking for smaller towns and bigger mountains.". I think that that pretty much sums up the town of Crested Butte and the jagged rugged peak. Also, it could be because this was pretty early season with only about 20 % of the mountain open, but it seemed very much so to have a real locals scene to it, people who had found there own little slice of paradise up valley.
The skiing was way better than I had anticipated, I was expecting two runs to be open, which was about the case, but the 20 inches of snow over the weekend sure as hell made those 2 (I am grossly underexaggerating here) runs feel to be about some of the best runs this season. The snow was your classic light and fluffy Colorado Champagne powder, which was different than any of the stuff that has fallen on the Front Range so far. Pretty bad stuff for Avalanche danger though, which is the reason we canceled our planned tour. Between not knowing the terrain, the avy danger and the lack of visibility we decided to play it safe and ski the resort. Besides the snow was so good there we didn't really need all that much else. No action shots this week, but I've got some scenics that I'm putting up.
I'd go back to Crested Butte in a heartbeat, between the locals scene and the big mountain that had so much more terrain that wasn't open to explore, it seems like the kind of place once could really spend a season. And it was super cheap, even with the free lift tickets tossed in!
On the stereo- Uncle John's Band- Grateful Dead

December 2-3:Loveland and Berthoud

This is going to be a fast post as I have to make it to work in a little while. Got back to Denver on Sunday after a very relaxing vacation in Florida with the family (more pictures later) and was greeted by snow, lots of snow. Tons of snow up in the mountains in fact, around 63" in one snowfall at Loveland in fact. Hooky was definetly played on Monday, in fact, it couldn't really be stopped considering the 20" of fresh that they reported Monday AM. I know it's not good to play hooky from work but 20" of fresh!?! That's amazing! Last year I drove to different parts of the state to get that kind of powder, and now it's sitting at my local hill. Work didn't have a chance.
Anyways, an excellent day was spent meadow skipping on the lower angle stuff at Loveland (the avalanche danger was pretty high-so I think they were afraid to open the steeps and the steeps under Chair 1 were pretty bumped out from the last few days). They opened up Benton's Bowl and Dave's Ditch (which I think is the first secret pow stash that I've discovered at Loveland (much thanks to my friend Lindsay!). Benton's tracked out pretty quickly, but there were a couple of excellent runs in really deep powder. And I mean slogging heavy deep. The sanouks were able to plow through it with no problem, but when I swapped to the motherships they were having issues with the heavyness of it. The good news with the heavyness of the snow is that it's making the avy danger go down as the snowpack is solidifying much quicker. It was still an awesome day to get to ski that kinda snow, and finding Dave's was the cream on top of the cake!
Tom and I had planned a seasons first Dawn Patrol for Tuesday up at Berthoud, so the next 4:30 AM rolled around and we were out the door and on our way up the pass. We were greeted by gusty breezes and a stunning sunrise full of alpenglow and the reds and yellows lighting into the snow. Absolutly beautiful. A pretty short skin up (I was feeling the fact that I'd been at sea level for almost the last few weeks, whew!) and we dug a quick pit to see what the base layers were doing, and found rotten sugar snow! We had already had the plan of sticking to skiing the Meadows down to the very bottom of Roll Out as the Avy danger had been at High the day before, so seeing this layer of rotten snow we decided to stick exactly to that plan.
The ski down however was a beautiful soulful meadow skip, and felt more than a little solid. Tom did a quick ski cut over a more convex roll over, and it didn't even budge. I think this new density of snow is definetly solidifying. It was awesome to get up to Berthoud and see it so filled in. There were a couple of spots that needed some extra snow but I can't wait to get some major skiing time in up there this season! Hopefully, I'll have time for another tour on Sunday, so Mel can get some more practice time in, but between now and then I need to focus on work as much as it pains me. Keep prayin' for more snow for right now.
On the Stereo-Dispatch-Passerby