5/22/2025 Route: Curvaceous Posted On: 5/22/2025, By: Sbenfield Info: The road is closed but dry. Bring your tricycles! Plenty of snow after Brainard Lake. Used snowshoes to get to the Curvaceous Couloir. Then, used Axe and crampons up this moderate slope leading to summit. Plunged stepped down the way I came. Included some photos of the surroundings if nearby peaks are on anyone’s Memorial Day radar. |
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11/23/2024 Route: East Ridge from Mt. Audubon Posted On: 11/24/2024, By: yaktoleft13 Info: Climbed the South ridge next to the standard route. Winter gate is closed for the season, adding 3.25 miles each way to reach Mitchell lake th. Thin covering of snow, form throughout the day. Trail to Mitchell lake is boot packed. We walked the lake, then trenched through knee deep snow and took a talus field and crossed a gully right under Audubon to reach the high terrain above and north of blue lake. Snowshoes would have been nice for the short section between the lake and talus, but it was only a quarter of a mile and probably wouldnt be worth the weight. Talus loose and shifty. Once on the high bench, lots of windswept terrain, able to link up large sections of dry rock and tundra. Spied a semi-dry looking ridge up to paiute, elected to take it. Mild scrambling up it, much of which was avoidable with snow travel. Definitely windy above treeline, but otherwise warm. Garmin was messing up, but guessing the stats were something like 13 miles, 3500 gain, 9:30. |
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7/11/2024 Route: East Ridge from Mt. Audubon Posted On: 7/12/2024, By: Corey Hartley Info: Summer conditions up to Audubon and across the ridge to Paiute. There was only one tiny patch of snow along the route. It was my first time in the area so considered a loop with the lakes trail, but it appeared there was still a decent amount of snow along the top of the most appealing way down from Paiute. I didn't investigate much and decided against trying it without spikes or an axe, so I went back the same way |
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6/12/2024 Route: Curvaceous Couloir Posted On: 6/12/2024, By: 9patrickmurphy Info: Road is still gated, but completely dry from the winter lot to the Mitchell Lake trailhead. Snow starts immediately from the trailhead, and is very patchy and wet until the first major creek crossing at a bridge. From there, snow is mostly continuous through an undulating and often dense forest. Navigation to Blue Lake was quite annoying. Some snow discontinuities exist above Blue Lake. Once in the Curvaceous Couloir, snow is continuous to about 100 feet from the summit. I randomly ran in to @k_fergie in the couloir which was fun and we skied the rest of the day together. We dropped the couloir at about 9:30 and the snow was perfect corn in the top 2/3, already turned to slush at the bottom. Once at Blue Lake, we skied most of the way out with free heels and no skins as the snow was so sticky you didn't even need skins. This took a while but was relatively straightforward; the approach basin is flatttt. |
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4/13/2024 Route: Curvaceous Couloir Posted On: 4/13/2024, By: Posthole Pete Info: Gorgeous day. Weather turned out to be perfect. Did not get a warm up from the sun until we were climbing the couloir so dropping in time ended up being spot on. Soft pre-corn all down the east face. The IPW is looking really good right now. |
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7/17/2023 Route: East Ridge from Mt. Audubon Posted On: 7/18/2023, By: Heading_Up Info: We got a late start at 9:10 or so, planning on the North Chimney on Mt. Toll. The route to the snowfields at the base of Toll are clear, but there are large snowfields on its shoulders/collar. The chimney itself is completely full of snow and we didn't think it looked doable, so we headed up Paiute and then took the ridge to Audubon and down. FWIW, all of the route is effectively clear of snow except the collar around Toll and the chimney. The most direct ascent to Paiute is blocked by snow just at the top but you can easily get around it to the left. You also could go straight over with microspikes. If you wanted to hike Toll without going over Pawnee, I suspect you could easily go straight up the bowl on the SE side with crampons and an axe and find the SE ridge route at the top. It would probably be a nice, quick ascent and good glissade down. We didn't bring that equipment, unfortunately, or we would have done it. |
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6/17/2023 Route: SE From Blue Lake Posted On: 6/20/2023, By: kwhit24 Info: Had to walk from Brainard Lake parking lot since the road is still closed to the Mitchell Lake TH. Only a short section still has snow so maybe that will open soon. Trails are 90% snow so it's very easy to get off track and we did bad coming down following existing tracks. Should've paid more attention to our GPX tracks. We did use microspikes for a little while around Blue Lake but didn't need snowshoes mainly because our shoes were already soaked by the time we got back down to the lakes. Didn't summit even though we were 150' from the top. After hearing two huge thunder rolls and getting notification of lightning within 1.5 miles we decided to bail and glissade down. Area probably had .5" overnight and received another 2"-3" while we were hiking. Sunny at the bottom |
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2/11/2023 Route: Southeast Face Posted On: 2/11/2023, By: Geckser Info: Had an awesome day on Paiute and Aubadon, taking advantage of the new green avy conditions. I will say we did an unprecedented number of transitions. 1:Bike with trail runners to Brainerd lake. 2:Lock bike and travel rest of road on trail runners 3:Switch to skins which we used until 12,400 where the snow became discontinuous. 4:A-frame the skis up to Aubadon and over to Paiute. 5:Ski from Paiute down drainage basin. 6:We Put skins back and skin back to bike. 7:A-frame skis again and bike down. I think all these transitions saved time but I am not certain. My partner brought a roadbike and only biked halfway up the road, I had no trouble with just a mountain bike. The skiing was phenomenal, though it was a long trip out. Talked to someone heading up Toll and that looks in as well. |
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10/15/2022 Route: East Ridge from Mt. Audubon Posted On: 10/18/2022, By: ColoNativeGal Info: Dry with some snow in spots in shaded and north facing areas. Currently not an issue. Brought microspikes, didn't need or use them. |
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10/8/2022 Route: East Ridge from Mt. Audubon Posted On: 10/8/2022, By: ryansunshine20 Info: Snow all avoidable but there was frost all over the rocks in the morning. I would recommend going back over to Audubon because the gully descent down to blue lakes sucks and the hike out was a bit annoying because of all the people/dogs. I had not seen anyone all day up until I hit blue lakes which was nice. |
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8/4/2022 Route: Clockwise loop - Paiute to Audubon Posted On: 8/5/2022, By: Makbrad Info: Summer conditions. Summit register is soaking wet and could use more paper. One pencil and a pen still intact. We hugged the right of the gully on the way up. Loose sand scree in the center. |
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3/27/2022 Route: Traverse from audubon Posted On: 3/28/2022, By: ellenmseb Info: The traverse from audubon to paiute is surprisingly heads-up currently. I used my ice axe to basically self-belay across each of 3 snow-ridges, but then decided i didn't want to leave that snow to soften further, so turned around 200' below paiute. I wouldn't even consider it without ice axe |
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4/3/2021 Route: East Ridge from Mount Audubon Posted On: 4/4/2021, By: supranihilest Info: There's a silly amount of snow on the traverse from Audubon to Paiute - it seems that all the snow that isn't on the former is all on the latter. The traverse is kind of intimidating looking with the snow but is pretty easy. There's some minor scrambling, some minor exposure, and plenty of rock hopping and snow to contend with. The final pitch to Paiute's summit is the steepest but not too bad. From Paiute's summit we took the ridge down towards the saddle with Mount Toll, then glissaded the steep slope into the basin. This is probably the most dangerous part of this climb, as the slope is steep enough to slide. You MUST get down off it before it gets too wet! From there we followed ski tracks out and down the myriad cliffs and waterfalls to the flats, then took the long hike back to the trailhead. The snow was wet slop by the end of the day. Traction and an ice axe were not necessary except for the glissade down the Paiute/Toll saddle. Flotation would have been useless on the ridge itself, only useful for the ascent of Audubon and descent and deproach from Paiute. Thanks to the skier ahead of us who left us a nice booter across the traverse. |
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6/28/2020 Route: Traverse from Audubon Posted On: 6/29/2020, By: nickle Info: Summer conditions, see conditions report for Audubon for more details + pictures. |
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6/7/2020 Route: Traverse from Audobon Posted On: 6/7/2020, By: jtfoss1 Info: Took the southeast ridge up Audobon - for portions not covered in the previous Audobon report from today: Some sections were good to have an ice ax. The ridge was clear in all sections worth noting. Lots of people at the summit but nobody else on the SE ridge. The route to Paiute was clear. We decided to descend the Toll-Paiute saddle. We should have descended the snow strip but went further to avoid snow. It was a long ways back to Mitchell Lake through the trees but fortunately the snow was mostly supportive. If you don't bring a bike, makes for a long day. |
