14ers.com

Perfect. I'm thinking the board may be my ride down.

Well, it's a day later than intended, but here's the promised TR:
http://www.14ers.com/php14ers/triprepor ... ki=Include" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thanks for the report - looks fun!
Roughly how long did it take you guys to get up and down? Also, no avy danger, right?

I skied it Saturday, was able to ski all the way summit to car w/o taking the skis off, although that did entail two short sections of careful walking through thin coverage in the flats. Most of the flats you can follow along the edge of the cornice. Trees were a bit crusty but the snow above treeline was good. With skinning up and skiing down it was 4 hours car to car. If you want more skiing, you can ski lower into the upper bowl and skin back up the ridge, a couple of other people did that on Saturday.

PaliKona wrote:Thanks for the report - looks fun!
Roughly how long did it take you guys to get up and down? Also, no avy danger, right?

Hiking up, and skiing down, it took me about 7 hours. However, I was with two hikers that I stayed with until treeline, and I'm not the fastest hiker or skier. If you're in better shape, I could definitely see 4-5 hours being a reasonable roundtrip time.

As far as avy danger, it looked pretty solid, and every slope I measured above treeline was less than 30 degrees. If I was going to worry about anything, it would be a couple spots below treeline where the trail crossed >30 degree slopes and skiers (myself included) were not taking particular care to stay on the packed trail. The couple slopes that there are aren't that big, it'd just be something to keep in mind.

I don't have any photos that show it well, but the more ambitious folks on Sunday skied to the bottom of the upper bowl, skied or hiked around the North side from there and dropped towards the McCullough Gulch trailhead. I'd have to be a bit more avy savvy before I did that, but it's getting to be the season for it.

Ridge is still the same... packed trail all the way but portions are covered with a few inches of blown-in powder.

Skiing wasn't bad today with good turns in the lower bowl (below) and plenty of powder in the drainage NW of the lower, east ridge, dumping out onto upper McCullough Gulch road. Sweet and was untouched.

Brrrr. This was my planned stopping point today but other skiers were heading to the summit. The winds and upcoming snow/wind will likely load up the South (Cristo) Couloir in the near future. Lower ridge/slope

Great report, Bill!

Aside from potential loading in Cristo, do you have any gauge on if it's in good shape for skiing?

I wanted to give an update from our ski descent of Quandary today. The coverage was descent in the upper bowl and we traversed across to the East Ridge standard route and skied the cornice down to the lower bowl. The snow in the lower bowl was pretty good and we decided to continue skiing northeast towards the McCullough Gulch Road instead of Southeast along the trail, back to the trailhead. As we were skiing through the trees around 12:00, we came to a rollover with a steeper angle. We decided to traverse to the east to more gentle terrain. As we were traversing, we triggered a slow moving, wet-loose avalance below us about 50' wide that crumbled down the slope below us running out about 150'. The slide occurred on a north/northeast aspect near where the Wheeler pack trail intersects the 11,300' contour on the map provided in the 14ers.com route description. If someone had been in the path, I don't believe they would have been buried but it certainly could have been a hazard.

Be careful out there as things start to warm up.

Anyone climb or ski Cristo today?

There were three parties on Quandary today from what I saw, all of which skied the East Ridge. Cristo is looking better and better. It did appear to be thin in places.

Thanks for heads up on slide MonGoose. We'll be up on the Angel tomorrow and will definitely be watching carefully. SE aspect is not ideal for a late morning descent, but from what I can tell the slope is fairly low angle. I'm hoping it holds together and we get some nice corn turns out of it.

...and if it does let go, I'll just stomp a 60' backflip and outrun it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcKguih40f0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Glad to hear you had a good descent and didn't get caught!