Crested Butte newspaper is full of flood angst, yesterday we ski slush that never got the nightly firm-up. Then today we head out for Mineral Point and what do we get? Full on blizzard conditions. Abused the Nytro driving on dirt for some distance between snow patches. Snow got continuous around Pittsburg. We wanted to hit Poverty Gulch and Mineral Point, but couldn’t find a way to cross the swollen Slate River, so we continued up the valley on the tracks of a local that had left ahead of us. Heading farther up got us in position for a low angled skiing approach to the “backside” of Purple Mountain. We were thinking we’d get it, then the storm hit. Back at ma’s ski hut now.
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| By now, we’re almost back in Marble. If we’d had our GPS we could have wandered to the summit through the soup, like being guided in Europe for $400/day through a whiteout. No thanks. Just fun to be up there messing around, getting some exercise, figuring out our “adult” sled. One observation: Incredible amount of snow despite a previous few days of warmth. |
WildSnow.com publisher emeritus and founder Lou (Louis Dawson) has a 50+ years career in climbing, backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering. He was the first person in history to ski down all 54 Colorado 14,000-foot peaks, has authored numerous books about about backcountry skiing, and has skied from the summit of Denali in Alaska, North America’s highest mountain.
