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All last week, Nick and I were looking for something to do (preferably ski) this weekend, and watched as the weather forecast kept getting worse. Finally, on Friday, Nick calls me up and says "Let's ski Bierstadt", to which my approximate response was o_0 , having seen the forecasts. Nick claimed there'd be a weather window before 10 AM, and I was skeptical, but willing to give it a shot. I figured with the road open, the worst that would happen was we'd get halfway up and get stormed off.
We arrived at the TH about 5:15, and were greeted by this beautiful sight:
We weren't sure if there'd be much of a line, but at least there'd be something, so we strapped on skis and skins and headed up.
Of course, behind us the whole time, Squaretop was tempting us with its beautiful snow lines.
Snow conditions among the dreaded willows led us to believe that we didn't get a hard freeze the night before:
But we pressed on, and were rewarded for our efforts along the way, and even made some new friends!
Gotta say, the route finding on this one was a bit tricky, definitely involved some willow-skiing.
Near the ridge (~13,600) we hit a windblown patch that threatened to make the descent difficult.
Thankfully we found good snow again.
And pushed on
And gained the summit!
Where I posed for the obligatory Captain's Pose:
Often imitated, never duplicated:
We got a quick group shot
Taken by these guys, who were on their 5th of 14 14ers in 2014! Way to go!
Now it was time to do what we came to do
Can I go now?
Carefully picking a line is critical at this point. (Woohoo!)
Of course, Nick had to be a purist by refusing to remove his skis while I walked down about 50ft to avoid this junkshow:
But soon we were back on the good stuff! We had probably close to an inch of fresh snow, enough to make it quite enjoyable.
Those lazy showshoers, poaching our skintrack!
Yep, it was pretty good.
Just had to steer away from the rocks
But pretty soon we were back among the dreaded willows, to Nick's delight.
But we cruised through under blue skies, until we crossed the creek and had to stop.
We sadly had to earn the turns we'd already made and climb back out to the TH
Thankfully, there was good snow all the way back (seriously, someone go ski that thing)
Nick was pretty jazzed about the day
Even as he was huffing and puffing on the way out
But it was a good day, and we were able to skin all the way back to the car.
Good snow, nearly continuous line, and great weather, don't know what more I could ask for!
(Note - my Delorme InReach only tracks every 10 minutes, hence the jumps in map below)
My GPS Tracks on Google Maps (made from a .GPX file upload):
First off, Nice trip report. Seems like there is a little more snow up top and less down near the creek from a few weeks ago. I did not know you could export .gpx files from the inreach thats pretty sweet, ill have to try it with my recent trip to quandary.
It's tough to get that one off the summit - looks similar to when Bill and I skied it. Good TR, Greg! We should hit the rock gym soon...
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