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(PR update -- new video edit added ;)) In my experience, the ski the 14ers project gets tougher with each passing year. And its not just because the list of "easy" mountains left undone naturally becomes shorter. The toughest parts to me are waiting for a springish snowpack to arrive, keeping the work schedule light in the spring, waiting for weather windows, finding partners available on a moment's notice and saying goodbye to my family as I leave for a trip.
But once I leave the house with confidence in the forecast, things shift back to almost autopilot.
So at the last minute on Friday evening the decision was made to cancel plans to leave for Aspen on Saturday afternoon to ski on Sunday in favor of heading back down to the Sangres to ski on Saturday. In a matter of minutes I went from being totally prepared for an Elks trip with a good buddy to totally unprepared for a solo Sangres trip to Kit Carson. I finished up my work day, scrambled to get together equipment, food, Red Bull. After having dinner with the fam, I jumped in the car and arrived at the Willow Lake trailhead at about 11pm.
About two hours sleep from 11:30pm and 1:30am had me heading up the familiar switchbacks up to Willow Lake by 2:15am. At about 5am, I succumbed to the lack of sleep and took an "Andrew Hamilton nap" right on the trail. 12 minutes later I woke up refreshed and ready to go or something like that.
I first hit snow at the creek crossing before the headwall. Hiking in trailrunners on the hard refrozen snow was going well and I continued to do so in favor of switching to skins. I had watched Dr. Jon's spot link earlier in the week and noticed that he stayed climbers right of Willow Lake. I chose to do the same when I was able to follow traces of his or another's path. When I got a view of Willow Lake from up on the hill, I finally switched over to ski boots/crampons.
It turns out Dr. Jon's route was very efficient and I didn't need to switch to skins until past the lake. From there it was decision time. Kit Carson? Challenger? Possibly both?
I was a bit surprised to see just how much of the basin and my intended route(s) was NE facing and getting sun hit already. With the forecast, probably not enough time for the two-fer. I decided to head up the OB and take it from there. I ended up skinning up the OB until I hit the shade and then switched to bootpacking at about 12,800ft. Climbing became slow and I began to worry about timing it right for skiing the S face. A tough move got me over the cornice and onto the S face where the wind was still winning the battle with the sun.
A few ascending traverses later and I was on the summit.
I felt OK about the ski back down given the traversey nature of the top section and the ability to head down on more S facing than SE facing terrain. At the summit I realized that I brought a helmet with no go bro mount. Turns out the standard fix worked:
Well, here's the ski video. Bear with me, my first editing experience here:
I was able to keep the skis on all way down to the creek crossing where I first hit snow on the way up.
Long day -- 13.5 hours car to car and another 8.5 hours round trip drive time to maximize weekend family time. Good times. Thanks for reading.
Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
Nice video, thanks for sharing!! I love watching those tele turns!!
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