At 12:30am, my alarm buzzed, pulling me from what could be described as “sleep” in only the most generous of terms. I had been drifting halfway between consciousness and unconsciousness, a mixture of exhaustion, anticipation, excitement, nervousness, and discomfort preventing either one from fully taking hold. As I blearily struggled to align and insert my contacts, a white light appeared from around the corner, accompanied by voices. Keep reading…
Savage Peak resides in the Holy Cross Wilderness 6 miles southwest of Holy Cross itself. Though there are some good summer hiking routes to its summit, a wild and aesthetic couloir on it’s northeastern flank makes for a good reason to lug skis back in there. Savage’s namesake couloir runs roughly 1,200 ft from near the summit down to Missouri Lakes. Read more…
I call this a bucket list item for a number of reasons. First, the Sangres see a snowpack like this once maybe every 5 years or so. Second, of all the grand peaks in the Sangres, from the town of Westcliffe, Horn Peak kind of steals the show, and the East Face is its showcase. There’s nothing really special about the route itself – it’s basically a long version of Crystal’s East Face or a less interesting version of Red’s Southeast face. Keep reading…
With weekend weather windows continuing to close down and push any thought of skiing bigger lines further and further into May, we decided to check out the north faces of Englemann Peak and Mt. Parnassus from Woods Creek on back to back weekends. When the weather sucks, go ski some low-hanging fruit and hope for the best. That was our mantra, and we wound up getting two decent days of skiing out of it while managing to avoid getting struck by lightning. Keep reading…