Williams Peak – Summit Ski Descent

Above is the view you get of Williams when you’re on just about any peak north of Independence Pass. I’m fairly certain the couloirs shown in the photo have been skied, but not from the summit as they’re actually on the face of a ridge which connects to the summit via a knife ridge (at upper arrow).

We used the visible couloirs for our ascent route (Louie climbed the right hand, the rest of us took the left), but noticed they were indeed impossible to connect from the peak top so we dropped another route on the northeast side of the peak (descent route not shown in photo above). We’re thinking this may have been the first summit ski descent of the peak, as it was somewhat tricky to put together.

You need good strategy to do a peak such as this in a day, while keeping it relatively enjoyable. We knew the most direct approach would be the Lost Man drainage, but also knew Lost Man would involve early morning torture skiing/walking up a pack trail with intermittent snow. Instead, we opted to leave from a higher trailhead, stay above timberline, and skin over Geissler Pass (see map below).

This proved to be an excellent choice that quickly brought us to the base of the peak. On the return, we did head down Lost Man. That was a brutal slog. Better would have been to slug it out back over Geissler Pass (provided the snowpack had not become dangerously gloppy — which it did not during this trip). In photo: Bob to left, then Anda and Louie. at Geissler Pass.

At any rate, we end up on a tippy summit that reminds me of Pyramid Peak. We can’t see any obvious way to ski down, an only one route leads off the top. Luckily, I remembered having once seen the usually hidden northeast side of the peak, and knew there was a a skiable line that involved working around some cliffs. So Bob went first to see if we could make it around the corner.

Bob gave it a thumbs up, but waited till I explored another option to skier’s right. A few weeks prior, with more snowcover there may have been another route where I looked. Instead, I had a 10 minute climb-out back to Bob’s position. While climbing, I passed over a glide crack that was at least 10 feet deep and similar to a smaller bergschrund on a glacier. The snowpack in this area is beyond “thick,” and way more copious than normal.