Trip Reports Backcountry

Backcountry skiing Independence Pass, Colorado, Geissler Peak. Good corn snow conditions for late May.

Tony had gotten a brain scan a few days before we skied Hayden last year. As it turned out, while he was up there getting 6,000 vert on a big Colorado mountain, the scan interpreter noticed a blood vessel in his brain was ballooned out in a large and potentially deadly aneurysm. It the thing had ruptured, even in civilization his chances of surviving would have been rare. Up on a mountain? Zero percent. In a word, it is miraculous Tony didn’t stroke out (as in permanently) during our Hayden Ski, what with the dehydration and raised blood pressure of hard endurance athletics.

It’s not skiing, it’s snirting. The new sport. Just have a place to dunk your skis afterward, and get ready to load up the washing machine once you’re home. But a day in the mountains, no matter how close to a laundry soap commercial it comes, is still a day in the mountains. So yesterday myself, Nick Thompson and Dave Downing ended skiing what I call the Teeny Couloir (left) on West Pearl Mountain. But not before a small detour as well as a pastry alert. Check it out.

This weekend my friend Skyler and I took a trip up to Winchester Fire Lookout, an historic fire lookout north of Mt. Baker highway on top of Winchester mountain up here in Washington State (see map below). I hadn’t gotten to go skiing in a few weeks and I was itching to get out, even if the conditions looked a little iffy due to warm weather and tons of new, unconsolidated snow (and I don’t mean powder).

Uneva Peak Vail Pass Colorado backcountry skiing

Grieskogel is a medium sized ski peak in the western Stubai Alps, in the Larstiger mountains between Sellrain and Hochstubai. You reach it for backcountry skiing via the usual network of roads you find in this area, in this case reminding me of spring skiing on Independence Pass back in Colorado. I’d hooked up for today’s trip with Manfred Barthel, the Austrian alpinist elder I’ve come to know over the past few years. Manfred continues to amaze me with his skill and endurance, not to mention his amazing knowledge of the Alps. He seems to have a sixth sense of where the snow is good, the avy danger lower, or the